Supporting the microbiology community with access to data, analysis services, standards and training (NFDI4Micriobiota)

Poster presentation by Cordula Hege at the 2023 Congress of the Federation of European Microbiological Societies on 9 - 13 July 2023 in Hamburg. 

NFDI4Microbiota aims to support the microbial community by providing access to data, analysis services, data/metadata standards and training. It belongs to the National Research data Infrastructure (NFDI), which aims to develop a comprehensive research data management. Different consortia ensure a broad coverage from cultural sciences, engineering to life sciences and natural science. NFDI4Microbiota intends to facilitate the digital transformation in the microbiological community (bacteriology, virology, mycology and parasitology). 

The German microbial research network will be supported 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.

Central for the NFDI4Microbiota consortium is the development and provision of the computational infrastructure and analytical workflows required to store, access, process, and interpret various microbiome-related data types. Here, NFDI4Microbiota will work on developing and implementing software and standardized workflows for users to analyse their own data.

Several workshops and training events for the community happened already and further will take place in future. Moreover, the consortium launched an ambassador program to connect with the participants, thereby helping to identify the needs of their local community. Technical solutions are developed, tested and refined in several use cases from different fields of microbiology. All relevant information and specific services are available via the web portal.