Mangul Lab publishes third paper – an analysis of microbial reference databases
Lana Martin April 10, 2020
Analysis of microbial reference databases
Today we celebrate the publication of our third peer-reviewed paper since Mangul Lab launched at USC!
Cailtin Loeffler and Aaron Karlsberg, both alumnus of Serghei’s group at UCLA and currently scientific research staff with Mangul Lab at USC, are first co-authors of “Improving the usability and comprehensiveness of microbial databases,” which is now available online. Caitlin, our bioinformatics analyst, and Aaron, our bioinformatics software engineer, contributed equally to this paper, which is their first publication! Congrats!
Metagenomic studies isolate DNA found in a sample of various environments, compare the sampled genomes to verified reference genomes, and identify the organism from which the reads originated. Ideally, a metagenomic study uses a reference database that contains all known genomic references. Today’s researcher can choose from many different genomic reference databases that contain verified reference genomes, but these databases lack a universal standard of specimen inclusion, data preparation, taxon labelling, and accessibility.
Lana (Mangul Lab project specialist), together with Serghei, Eleazar Eskin (UCLA faculty), and David Koslicki (Penn State faculty) are co-authors and contributed to the analysis of databases and formulation of guidelines for development of a master reference database that promises to improve the quality and quantity of omics research.
Read our paper published by BMC Biology.
Reference:
Caitlin Loeffler, Aaron Karlsberg, Lana S Martin, Eleazar Eskin, David Koslicki, Serghei Mangul: Improving the usability and comprehensiveness of microbial databases. In: BMC Biology, 18 (37), 2020. https://rdcu.be/b3sk4