Development of new method for environmental impact assessment by combination of genomics and mathematical statistics

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26550053
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Environmental impact assessment
• Research Institution: Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
• Principal Investigator: TAKAMI Hideto 国立研究開発法人海洋研究開発機構, 海底資源研究開発センター, 上席研究員 (70359165)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): TAKEMOTO Kazuhiro 九州工業大学, 情報工学研究院, 准教授 (40512356)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 環境メタゲノム / 生理代謝機能 / 環境影響評価 / 機能モジュール / MAPLEシステム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Objective of this study is to develop a new method for environmental impact assessment based on the metagenomic data of microbial communities obtained from the targeted environments by combination of genomics and mathematical statistics. First of all, we quantified the metabolic and physiological potential based on completion ratio of the KEGG functional modules.
Module completion ratio is easy-to-understand measure to evaluate functional potential but when the genes used for a module are shared with the other modules, the MCR does not necessarily reflect the working probability. Thus, we proposed the use of the Q-value for determining the significance of module completion. We also developed calculation method for abundance of each complete module to evaluate functional robustness. Since we could clarify the difference in functional potential between different sites using these methods, it is expected that our method is sufficiently applicable to actual environmental impact assessment.

Free Research Field

ゲノム科学