Molecular ecology at the sertão - Using Galaxy to empower research in developing communities

The Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (UEFS) is a public state university serving undergraduate and graduate students in and around Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil. Both Feira de Santana and Bahia have roots in ranching and extraction industries and Bahia has historically been among the lowest 10% of Brazilian states for per capita income and among the highest economic inequality rates. At UEFS, and the majority of the universities in the Brazilian Northeast region, access to high performance computers is prohibitively difficult due to a scarcity of resources.

This results in a lack of opportunities for undergrads to learn genomics and metagenomics and use computational biology tools first hand. Furthermore, most microbiome studies performed in the Brazilian Northeast are performed by a small number of groups consisting primarily of professors and graduate students, who have been trained outside of the Northeast or abroad, further limiting student access.

As part of FINEP/MCTI 2023, a federal initiative to advance local research institutions and develop green energy sources in Brazil, UEFS was awarded a grant to develop bioreactor technology to aid in the conversion of cassava waste and other agricultural byproducts to biogas. Because of the importance that the microbiome population structure plays in carbon capture and biogas generation the course “Microbiomas ambientais e biotecnologia” was proposed.

Originally offered as an elective course to graduate students in 2023 and after a successful pilot, an online workshop was made available to all students in January 2025. As part of this curriculum we have developed a tutorial and pipeline for 16S rRNA analysis in QIIME2 on Galaxy that goes from DADA2 to taxonomic assignment, diversity measures, and differential abundance analysis using ANCOM-BC and uses vegan envfit to identify meaningful environmental variables.

The workshop has raised the necessity to reach the community in a more significant way. Beyond making the Galaxy tools and tutorials available, in both English and Portuguese, but also using real world data collected from the surrounding biomes, such as the semiarid region where UEFS is located.

Presentation uploaded by Maria Doyle with permission from Carolina O Santana.