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Planet Microbe: Toward the integration of oceanographic ‘omics, environmental and physiochemical data layers
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  • Alise Jany Ponsero,
  • Kai Blumberg,
  • Matt Bomhoff,
  • Elisha M. Wood-Charlson,
  • Bonnie Hurwitz
Alise Jany Ponsero
University of Arizona

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Kai Blumberg
University of Arizona
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Matt Bomhoff
University of Arizona
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Elisha M. Wood-Charlson
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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Bonnie Hurwitz
University of Arizona
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Abstract

Oceanographic research cruises produce abundant data, using a wide range of methods and equipment; very often through large collaborative efforts. These research endeavors span a broad array of disciplines and are critical to investigating the interplay between biological, geological, and chemical processes in the ocean systems over space and time. The advent of genomic sequencing technologies allows for the analysis of gene expression in a variety of environmental settings, to measure the distribution and significance of metabolites and lipids in organisms and the environment. Despite scientists’ best efforts to carefully curate and share their data with collaborators to advance individual studies and publications, no systematic, unifying framework currently exists to integrate ‘omics data with physical, geochemical, and biological datasets commonly used by the broader geoscience community. As a result, the moment each sample leaves the ship is often the last time each data component appears together in a unified collection. Typically, ‘omics datasets are submitted to nucleotide sequence repositories, whereas contextual environmental data are submitted and stored in specialized data-repositories, or only made available within published papers. This makes it difficult to fully reconnect in-situ data, therefore limiting their reuse in other studies. The development of resources to facilitate the aggregation, publication and reuse of biological datasets along with their physicochemical information is critical for studying marine microbes and the biogeochemical processes in the ocean that they drive. We present Planet Microbe, a cyberinfrastructure resource enabling data discovery and open data sharing for historical and on-going oceanographic sequencing efforts. Several historical oceanographic ‘omics datasets (Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT), Bermuda Atlantic Time-series (BATS), Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS)) have been integrated into Planet Microbe along with new oceanic large-scale datasets as the Tara Expeditions and Ocean Sampling Day (OSD). In Planet Microbe, these ’omics data have been reintegrated with their in-situ environmental contextual data, including biological and physicochemical measurements, and information about sampling events, and sampling stations. Finally, cruise tracks, protocols and instrumentation are also linked to these datasets to provide the user with a comprehensive view of the metadata. Additionally, Planet Microbe integrates computational tools using National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Cyberinfrastructure (CyVerse) and provides users with free access to large-scale computing power to analyze and explore these datasets.