Direct Support of Research

The Microbial Environment, Trustee Grant

The following grant was made from an appropriation approved by the Sloan Foundation Board of Trustees

The Center for the Advancement of Genomics, Inc. Rockville, MD 20850	$2,500,000
The aim of this new program is to understand at the microbial level the human indoor and outdoor environment. Although our natural microbial environment is of interest as a field of scientific research, this area may also help us learn how to make this environment more hospitable to human life or more resistant to biological attacks. Air is a major route of microbial transfer to humans via the mucosal surfaces of the respiratory system. At least some of the many microorganisms in the air make their way past the defense barriers of the nose and mouth to cause infections in the upper or lower respiratory tracts or beyond. Air is also a major microbial transport mechanism across natural ecosystems. For example, the soil that forms on the top of a newly erupted volcano is colonized from the air. What little is known about microbes in the air is based on the ability of scientists to grow the microorganisms in the laboratory. However, over 90% cannot be grown in the laboratory and bacteria lack morphologically distinct characteristics that allow species to be visually differentiated. Recently discovered genomic techniques now allow scientists to begin the process of cataloguing and understanding the vast unseen and unknown microbial world in the oceans, freshwater, soil, and air, including the vast majority of organisms that have defied classification because they do not grow in laboratory cultures. Craig Venter and his colleagues, making use of novel techniques and sophisticated computer technology he and others developed to sequence the human genome, have recently studied seawater from the Sargasso Sea. One billion base pairs of non-redundant sequence data, estimated to be derived from at least 1,800 genomic species and 148 previously unknown bacterial phylotypes, have been discovered. Venter’s team is collecting and sequencing samples from the world’s seas and air to determine the genome of the environment. The sequencing methods are expensive; it cost nearly $2 million to sequence the DNA isolated from the water samples of the Sargasso Sea. With this grant, Venter and his team of researchers will determine the environmental genome of indoor and outdoor air samples collected in New York City. They intend to collect air samples from the rooftop and inside of a tall building and determine DNA sequences. Results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and the sequences will be entered into the public domain by means of a new environmental genomics database at the National Institutes of Health. Project Director: J. Craig Venter, President.