The PIBnet initiative is a joint effort by the above laboratories to modernize their activities, including collection management and microbial characterization approaches and technologies. Within this

To perform assignment of 16S sequences to bacterial genera and statistical analysis of variations of bacterial populations collected from mice feces

DNA topoisomerase IB (Topo IB) enzymes are ubiquitous in eukaryotes, where they represent the major DNA topoisomerase I activity. However, Topo IB sequences are also found in other phyla, such as archaea and bacteria, as well as viruses. Given the large amount of sequenced data available in public databases, this project aims to infer a robust Topo IB gene tree based on a representative set of homologous sequences gathered from a large taxonomic sample.

The PIBnet initiative is a joint effort by 15 National Reference Centers (NRC), 8 Collaborative Centers of World Health Organization, the Collection de l’Institut Pasteur & Cyanobacteria collection and the CIBU to modernize their activities, including collection management and microbial characterization approaches and technologies. Within this large concerted effort, a priority is to promote whole genome sequencing (WGS) as the major characterization approach of microbial agents for surveillance and outbreak investigation.   Our ambition is to have shifted to WGS as a routine strain characterization method for epidemiological surveillance and outbreak investigation in the Institut Pasteur at the end of 2016. The target volume is 10,000 genomes a year. On the bioinformatics level, this requires implementing fast data treatment tools, databases, genotyping schemes and methods to extract medically relevant information from genomic sequences (resistome, virulome).

The aim of this project is to implement, at the level of the research units, a bioinformatics workflow dedicated to the analysis of the microbiome, and of the virome in particular, based on Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data (Illumina technology). This workflow will be applied in different contexts, from the identification of nucleotide sequences belonging to a novel or emerging pathogen (mainly viruses) presente in a clinical sample (such as serum or cerebrospinal fluid), to the determination of the whole sequence genome of isolated and uncharacterized viruses (such as bacteriophages of Leptospira).