(300-48) The National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC): advancing plant-microbiome research through open multi-omics data and standardized metadata
Postdoctoral Research Associate Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico
Body of Abstract: The National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) is a collaboration between multiple national labs and the research community with a vision to connect data, people, and ideas to advance microbiome innovation and discovery. The NMDC seeks to promote Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data in the environmental microbiome field by providing a platform for researchers to share their data in accordance with FAIR principles. The NMDC offers three resources for the community - a Submission Portal, Data Portal, and NMDC EDGE - to provide researchers the tools to upload, search, and process microbiome data. The Submission Portal provides metadata guidelines and templates for data submission for the community to contribute their work towards open microbiome research, while the Data Portal allows researchers to browse these curated datasets through these standard metadata terms. NMDC EDGE provides bioinformatics workflows for researchers with all levels of experience to process multi-omics microbiome data. All three tools aim to standardize data along FAIR guiding principles to promote data reuse and therefore facilitate new discoveries. The NMDC also continuously engages with the research community to improve and iterate the products based on user feedback. Here, we will present the NMDC resources and workflows and discuss how the NMDC can collaborate with the plant research community to produce FAIR microbiome data and advance discoveries within the plant-microbiome field.