National Research Data Infrastructure for the Research of Microbiota (NFDI4Microbiota) – Democratize access to microbiota data and high-end computational analyses
Abstract
Microbes (bacteria, parasites, viruses, protists, and fungi) influence our everyday lives and have a not-yet-determined impact on one health. Therefore, microbiology has had a considerable increase in research projects and applications in its various fields. Many of these projects are closely related and have the potential to be more than the sum of their parts. NFDI4Microbiota aims to facilitate that process with a digital transformation in the microbiological community by providing access to data, analysis services, training and infrastructure. NFDI4Microbiota was established as a central hub to support the microbiological community in Germany and abroad. It comprises ten well-established partner institutions. We are also supported by five professional societies and more than 50 participant institutions. Within the consortium, we aim to facilitate the digital transformation of the microbiological community to accelerate the generation of new and relevant knowledge. The consortium has started to build a national and international network of mutual support and feedback. Within this frame, it provides specific training to accelerate research, and customizes infrastructure and microbiome computational tools. Further, we support high-quality research data management (RDM) and emphasize the importance of (meta)data to adhere to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The consortium provides various tools, methodologies and resources to translate new and already existing data into new knowledge. Among others, tools such as AMBER (assessments for metagenome binners), BacDive (database for bacterial information), VirJenDB (virus genome database), BioAutoML (Automated feature engineering and Metalearning for classification of biological sequences) and various Metagenome Metadata DBs (Terrestrial, Human, Marine, Animal). The NFDI4Micrbiota also provides various training programs for implementing FAIR principles and Open Science, RDM, databases, general programming and data science, data generation and analysis. To connect the resources mentioned above, we established an infrastructure that includes analysis tools, a knowledge base (GitHub contains material on RDM) and a cloud-based system for the analyses, integration and storage of microbiome data. An ambassador program was established to connect with the participants and identify the vast needs of microbiologists performing computational analyses. By creating a central resource for German microbiota research, the NFDI4Micriota consortium aims to represent the central connection for the microbiological community. Also, it provides researchers with infrastructure, expertise and easy access to tools and training programs to enhance their research and make it FAIR.