Introducing the National Research Data Infrastructure for the Research of Microbiota (NFDI4Microbiota)

Poster presentation for the 31st Annual Meeting of the Society for Virology 30 March – 2 April 2022 in Munich.

Microbes - including viruses - have a strong influence on every aspect of human life. Driven by technological advances that allow e.g. high-throughput molecular characterization of microbial species and communities, microbiological research helps to address global health threats such as viral pandemics. These recent advances result in the generation of large data sets, yet the use and re-use of this data so far has failed to exploit its potential. NFDI4Microbiota aims to facilitate the digital transformation of the microbiological community and thus the mission of the consortium is to support the German virology and microbiology community with access to data, analysis services, (meta)data standards and training. A German microbial research network will be generated through training and community building activities, and by creating a cloud-based system that will make the storage, integration and analysis of microbial data, especially omics data, consistent, reproducible, and accessible.  Thereby, NFDI4Microbiota will promote the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) principles and Open Science.

Especially for viruses, we aim to establish a virus database, including not only the option to submit viral data, but also metadata. Data will be quality checked and the virologist has the option to make them publicly available or keep the data in his own ‘workbench’. Common analysis tools, such as for homology search, assembly, alignments with known sequences, or phylogenetic information will be provided.

NFDI4Microbiota has started its activity in October 2021. It consists of ten well-established partner institutions and is supported by five professional societies and more than 50 participants. Many workshops and training events for the communities will take place in 2022 (https://nfdi4microbiota.de/index.php/trainings/). Moreover, the consortium will connect to the participants via an ambassador program and start the work on different Use Cases this year.

If you plan to submit your virus data or you want to know details about the planned virus database we will be at the conference all time to answer your questions.

NFDI4Microbiota helps the microbiological research community by providing technical solutions and a comprehensive training program. Through the dual emphasis on education and services, NFDI4Microbiota will ensure that microbial research in Germany is synergistic and efficient.