Microorganisms dominate the planet in terms of total mass, species diversity, and metabolic range.
They include pathogens, microbes that are beneficial to higher organisms, and microorganisms that will fill key gaps in our knowledge of microbial diversity. Many are of enormous present and future economic value. Although genomic information in itself is only a sequence of bases, it provides a framework for understanding how the organism functions and lives. This in turn can be used to understand why an organism may be pathogenic or beneficial to a plant or animal, or how it functions in certain environments. The purpose of this interagency Program is to support high through-put sequencing of genomes of microbes that are of fundamental biological interest, as well as those that are important to the productivity and sustainability of agriculture and forestry, and to the safety of the nations food supply.