Events

Best Institute, Toronto
 
Through its Genomics Project Development (GPD) workshops program, the Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) hosted a half-day scientific meeting focused on "Protein Function and Environmental Metagenomes" in conjunction with Dr. Elizabeth Edwards, the University of Toronto, and Structural Proteomics in Toronto (SPiT).

It is widely appreciated that the microbial world contains by far the greatest fraction of biodiversity in the biosphere, and that microbes will deliver the greater part of enzyme diversity and the majority of new commercial biotechnological applications. The vast potential of microbes as a largely untapped natural resource has stimulated the development of new genomics-based discovery approaches: so-called “metagenomic” or environmental genomic approaches. 

This workshop brought together leading scientists from microbial and metagenomic enzyme discovery and structural genomics fields in order to develop a combined approach for high-thoughput mining and large-scale characterization of enzymes and metabolic pathways.

The event (see meeting agenda for more details) attracted more than 150 researchers, mostly from the Toronto and Ontario research communities.

Outcomes

Outcomes from this workshop include enhanced collaborative relationships between Toronto metagenomic researchers and colleagues in the UK and Russia, which have in turn resulted in multiple large-scale project proposals and research investments.