“Standards for Phytobiomes Measurement” NIST-Phytobiomes Alliance workshop

August 12, 2016

Location

Gaithersburg, MA, USA

Outline

A workshop was held in association with the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to identify priorities in developing standards, protocols, reference materials and reference data for phytobiomes research. The discussion will focus primarily on soil and plant microbiomes, and will cover topics including sample collection (how to avoid under- and over-sampling in the field), sample storage, macromolecule extraction from soil and plant tissues, development of relevant reference communities, minimizing plant macromolecule interference in microbiome/mycobiome/virome characterization, reproducibility in microbiome technologies, and reference datasets for analytical tool development. NIST participants will share their expertise in defining reference materials, data and methods for human microbiome measurements.