Through the GRDI, several science based departments and agencies of the Government of Canada are collaborating in the field of genomics research.
- Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)
- Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)
- Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO)
- Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)
- Health Canada (HC)
- National Research Council (NRC)
- Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)
- Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)
GRDI Ecobiomics
Traditional methods of assessing biodiversity are limited by factors such as cost, time, and difficulty in standardizing protocols. Genomic tools like next-generation sequencing provide opportunity to “see” more biodiversity and understand how ecosystems function and change.
Ecobiomics is a GRDI Shared Project that focuses on the urgent need to better understand the extent and significance of ongoing changes to biodiversity in soil and aquatic ecosystems that sustain ecosystem services upon which we and our economy depend.
Land use disturbances are having enormous adverse impacts on the biodiversity and integrity of natural and managed ecosystems around the world. Adverse impacts on biodiversity are compromising ecosystem services and processes, reducing ecosystem resilience, and leading to unpredictable ecosystem responses to environmental change.
Objectives
This Ecobiomics Project has three overarching objectives:
a. Develop standard methods for soil and water sample collection, DNA extraction, next generation sequencing, bioinformatics analysis pipelines, and a federal Bioinformatics Platform for harmonizing analyses of metagenomics data across federal departments.
Sequencing will be centralized on the Illumina MiSeq and HiSeq platforms. The project will also establish a federal government platform to harmonize collection, storage, and analysis of metagenomics data across federal departments into the future.
b. Pilot new genomic observatories for establishing comprehensive metagenomics baselines to enable assessment of future changes to water and soil biodiversity at long-term environmental monitoring sites in Canada.
Metagenomics tools will be applied to establish comprehensive biodiversity baseline reference conditions at the genomic observatory sites for assessing changes to aquatic microbiomes, soil microbiomes and invertebrate zoobiomes in response to anthropogenic disturbances in the future. The genomic observatories will provide legacy datasets that could continue to be mined into the future.
c. Generate new knowledge by applying next generation sequencing to more comprehensively characterize aquatic microbiomes, soil microbiomes and invertebrate zoobiomes, and test hypotheses for improving environmental monitoring, assessment and remediation activities for water quality and soil health across Canada.
Knowledge will be used to identify new organisms and gene markers to serve as better early warning tools for predicting risks to aquatic and soil ecosystems. The projects will enable hypothesis testing to generate actionable knowledge for end-users to improve assessment, monitoring and remediation activities for protecting soil health and water quality.