Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


Archive for November 6th, 2009

 

Metagenomics and the Computing Challenges of Microbial Communities

November 6th, 2009 / in big science, research horizons / by Ran Libeskind-Hadas

Why should you care about microbial communities? Except for viruses, they are the most abundant life on Earth and have an overwhelming effect on our environment and our lives. Consider that about half the carbon dioxide on Earth is processed through microbes that live in the oceans. Then consider that the most modern climate models of ocean life include just five organisms. This is despite recent findings that point to thousands of oceanic species, which do many different things and presumably influence our climate. Metagenomics is a relatively new field that seeks to understand the structure and function of the shockingly large number of microorganisms on our planet.  New technologies […]