University Of Maryland School Of Medicine Scientist Launches Journal Focusing On Microbiome Research - Healthcare Global

“Two prominent microbial genome scientists have launched a new peer-reviewed publication focusing on microbiome research in environmental, agricultural, and biomedical areas. Jacques Ravel, Ph.D., from the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Genome Sciences and Eric Wommack, Ph.D., from theUniversity of Delaware are the Editors-in-Chief of Microbiome, a BioMed Central (BMC) publication, which is scheduled for its first issue in the fall 2012.   The new publication reflects the growing importance of the need for studying microorganisms and their function in their natural environment – their microbiome - whether that environment is the human body, an environmental niche or any other habitat.  ‘Microorganisms, by their omnipresence, impact the entire biosphere, including the human body,’ explains Dr. Ravel, who is studying the effect of the human microbiome on women's health, and is part of the NIH-funded Human Microbiome Project (HMP). The central purpose of Microbiome is to unite investigators conducting microbiome research in environmental, agricultural, and biomedical arenas. Topics broadly addressing the study of microbial communities, such as, microbial genomics surveys, bioinformatics, meta-omics approaches and community/host interaction mathematical modeling will be considered for publication. ‘We have set rigorous standards in terms of quality and availability of the data to guarantee that the studies we will be publishing are useful to other scientists,’ says Dr. Ravel. The journal includes a new section, ‘Microbiome Announcements,’ that will contain short reports describing microbiome datasets and their associated clinical or environmental data. ‘We are working with experts in the field and are embracing genomics standards, such as those established by the Genomics Standards Consortium, which are very important to us,’ explains Dr. Wommack...”