BeeBiome.info: a portal for increasing the accessibility of bee microbiome data

Citation

Vishwakarma S, Mesina L, Lam K, Ryabov M, Lansing L, Chen G, Guarna MM, Ortega Polo R. BeeBiome.info: a portal for increasing the accessibility of bee microbiome data. North America Bee Research Conference – virtual; Jan 13 – 14, 2022.

Résumé en langage clair

Databases play a key role in scientific research, and unification of the information about the data being shared can play a key role in cross-study analyses, addressing long-standing questions in the field, and defining new questions. In this short talk, the audience was introduced to the BeeBiome Data Portal, an international effort to build an online resource to facilitate access to information about data belonging a very specific area: the bee microbiome. The ongoing data curation and technology development activities were summarized, as well as the next steps for this project.

Résumé

The bee gut microbiome is the community of microorganisms living within the bee digestive system, and it directly impacts bee health and immunity. The recent advent of sequencing technologies has enabled the generation of several bee microbiome datasets from different sources. There is an urgent need for those bee microbiome datasets to be made more accessible so that information can be applied in scientific research and can be translated for stakeholder use.

Our team is advancing the development of the BeeBiome Data Portal, which was initiated by the international Bee Microbiome Consortium. The portal will maximize the value of the complex and diverse bee microbiome datasets by enabling analysis and dissemination of information on the microorganisms and viruses associated with bees. Our main goal is to provide a comprehensive catalogue of all currently available sequence datasets about bee-associated microbes and viruses, enrich it with information from the literature, and serve as an entry point to facilitate access to information on the diversity of bee-associated microbes and viruses and their impact on bee health. Our hope is that this project helps to catalyze bee microbiome research by promoting metadata standardization, sharing and analyses through the increased accessibility to bee microbiome data.