2. Unifying a portfolio of EOS activities

3. Mathematics and Informatics for Environmental
‘Omic Data Synthesis (‘Omics) TAP

4. Five phases of Delivery:
Where are we
1. NERC Consultation.
2. Formation of the Advisory and Implementation
Group (AIG).
3. Administering the Bioinformatics Fellowships.
4. Building the Environmental ‘Omics Network
(EON).
5. Wrap up of programme
All of these goals will be achieved through the establishment of
the Environmental ‘Omics synthesis (EOS) centre, as
recommended by the NEOMICS strategy.

5. NEOMICS Consultation (2010/2011)

6. Establishing an effective AIG
Directorate:
Management Team
Academic and
Technology
Specialists
Observers:
Industry/Government
Research Council
Partners
AIG

7. Omics Discipline Hopping Grants
Tracey Timms-Wilson

8. Awards Made
Modelling proteomics data for investigating plant response to
environmental stress.
Professor Steven Rushton, Newcastle University
Spatial ecological genomics of free-ranging Great tits.
Professor Ben Sheldon, Oxford University
Implementing Metabolomics Analyses into Workflows: Towards
Genome-Metabolome Large-Scale Data Fusion.
Professor Mark Viant, University of Birmingham
Exploiting sociogenomics datasets for understanding phenotypic
plasticity.
Dr Seirian Sumner, University of Bristol
Efficient Biological Networks Discovery and Analysis
Professor Leszek Gasieniec, University of Liverpool

9. NERC Independent Research
Fellowships in Bioinformatics
Dawn Field

10. AIG input
• Science Quality must be primary criteria
• Need to leverage reputation of NERC
fellowships
• Do not re-invent the wheel
• Balance science quality with delivering directed
science program

11. Scientific Challenge Areas
“Applicants will be expected to develop science-
driven, environmentally relevant, multi-
disciplinary and computationally-based
independent research agendas in bioinformatics
using ‘omics technologies.”
“direct relevance to the NERC strategy and
associated areas such as human health, global
food security, agricultural productivity,
ecosystem health, and other aspects of
sustainability”

12. Scientific Challenge Areas:
...may included
• Understanding patterns of biodiversity, including ‘hidden’ or cryptic biodiversity.
• Understanding past evolutionary and ecological events to understand the present
and build predictions about future response to changing environments.
• Understanding the relationship between genetic variation and response to the
environment.
• Modelling complex biological interactions underlying the resilience of ecosystem
services.
• Linking environmental ‘omics data to other large scale data sets and models.
• Informing the relationship between environment and human health.
• Advancing novel algorithms, data structures and ontologies.
It is recognised that to effectively address these strategic science challenges it will be
necessary for Fellows to align with other Research Councils, Government
Agencies and Departments, charities or industry. Applicants should identify these
strategic alignments within their Case for Support.

13. The Environmental Omics Synthesis Centre
(EOS): Synergies
Bringing together ideas, disciplines, people and organisations to harness
‘omics to advance Environmental Science.
Ensuring that we build an active research community working in this area over
the next five years and beyond.
Establishing Bioinformatics as a discipline in its own right in environmental
science.
Mainstreaming the use of sophisticated informatics approaches and developing
new ones.
Promoting an interdisciplinary approach that facilitates integration of
environmental biology into complex scientific problems.
Promoting a synthesis approach that makes use of existing data resources as
well as generating new data to address complex environmental problems.
Building collaborations between environmental science and other areas of
science (e.g. medical science, structural biology, computational science,
etc.).
Growing the environmental ‘omics community in the UK and beyond.
Successful applicants will be required to interact with EOS and attend
annual conferences.

14. iEOS: International Environmental
Omics Synthesis Conference
Peter Kille

15. Science program Cross-cutting
NERC Themes
• SESSION I. Archeaological Omics. Learning from the Past to inform
the Future. Chair: Prof. Tom Meagher
• SESSION II. Ecological Omics . from Biodiversity workflows to
Molecular Adaptation. Dr Claire Gachon
• SESSION III. Epigenetics. From Molecules to Phenotypes. Chair: Prof.
Peter Kille
• SESSION IV. Evolutionary Omics. Phylogenetics and the Tree of Life.
Chair: Dr Daniel Barker
• SESSION V. Integrated and systems Omics. Towards Environmental
Systems Biology. Chair Prof. Mark Viant
• SESSION VI. Community Ecology. Community Profiling
(Metagenomics and Metabarcoding) to Function. Chair Dr Mesude
Bicak

16. International speakers
of the highest calibre

17. What is the Environment ‘Omics Synthesis
centre – EOS?
Disciplines People
OrganisationsIdeas

18. Moore’s Law put to shame:
Man to machine
2000 02 04 06 08 10
100,000
10,000
1,000
100
1.0
0.1
10
Moore’s Law – Cost of Computing
Cost ($) per Million Bases
Broad Institute
Radionucleotides
Fluorescence
Capillary
MPS
SingleMolecule

19. Technology Overload
Illumina Highseq – 40 Gb/day
ABI SOLiD 5500xl – 30 Gb/day
Roche Flx Titanium – 2 Gb/day
£300-500K

20. Technology Overload
Illumina Highseq – 40 Gb/day
ABI SOLiD 5500xl – 30 Gb/day
Roche Flx Titanium – 2 Gb/day
£300-500K
Illumina MiSeq – 1 Gb/day
£130-70K
ABI SOLiD 5500 – 10 Gb/day
Roche GS – 0.1 Gb/day

21. New Horizons
Pacific Biosciences – PacBio RS
Ion Torrent– Personal Genome Machine Oxford Nanopore

22. Much more than ‘genomics’

23. To only glimpse the tree of life:
the opportunities are endless
Professor Mark Blaxter (Edinburgh University)

24. Mathematics and Informatics for Environmental
‘Omic Data Synthesis (‘Omics) TAP