Genome Management Information System

To help build the critical mulitdisciplinary community needed to advance systems microbiology research, the Genome Management Information System (GMIS) contributes to DOE Genomics:GTL program strategies. GMIS also communicates key scientific and technical concepts emanating from GTL and related programs to the scientific community and the public. We welcome ideas for extending and improving communications and program integration to represent GTL science more comprehensively.

Accelerating GTLScience

For the past 17 years, we have focused on presenting Human Genome Project (HGP) information and on imparting knowledge to a wide variety of audiences. Our goal has been to help ensure that investigators could participate in and reap the genomic revolution's scientific bounty, new generations of students could be trained, and the public could make informed decisions regarding complicated genetics issues. Since 2000, GMIS has built on this experience to communicate about the DOE Office of Science's Genomics:GTL program.

GTL is a departure into a new territory of complexity and opportunity requiring contributions of interdisciplinary teams from the life, physical, and computing sciences and necessitating an unprecedented integrative communications approach. Because each discipline has its own perspective, effective communication is highly critical to the overall coordination and success of GTL. Part of the challenge is to help groups speak the same language from team and research- community building and strategy development through program implementation and results reporting to technical and lay audiences. Our mission is to inform and foster participation by the greater scientific community and administrators, educators, students, and the general public.

Specifically, our goals center on accelerating GTL science and its applications. They include the following:

• Foster information sharing, strategy development, and communication among scientists and across disciplines to accomplish synergies, innovation, and increased integration of knowledge. A new research community centered around the advanced concepts in GTL will emerge from this effort.

• Help reduce duplication of effort.

• Increase public awareness about the importance of understanding microbial systems and their capabilities. This information is critical not only to DOE missions in energy and environment but to the international community as well.

Home page: http://doegenomes.org

(Contact: Betty K. Mansfield, mansfieldbk@ornl.gov, 865-576-6669)