Since its initial release, QIIME (pronounced\n\u201cchime\u201d) has supported many microbiome studies and gained a broad user and\ndeveloper community. In fact, QIIME has been cited in more than 15,000 academic\npapers, making it one of the most often-cited scholarly works by an NAU author.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beginning in 2016, Caporaso and his\nteam reengineered the platform to facilitate reproducible and modular analysis\nof microbiome data. The project to redesign and disseminate QIIME 2<\/a> was funded by a National Science Foundation\ngrant awarded to Caporaso and Knight and is described in a paper published July\n24 in Nature Biotechnology<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs we interacted with QIIME users in our online support forum, in\nour workshops and through direct collaborations, we realized there was\npotential for better serving the growing community of microbiome researchers in\nacademia, government and industry,\u201d Caporaso said. \u201cQIIME 2<\/a> retains the features that made QIIME\na powerful and widely used analysis pipeline, while providing new features that\nwill drive the next generation of microbiome research, including interactive\nspatial and temporal analysis and visualization tools; support for metabolomics\nand shotgun metagenomics analysis; and automated data provenance tracking to\nensure reproducible, transparent microbiome data science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA core goal of QIIME 2 is to cultivate a diverse and inclusive\ncommunity of scientists, software engineers, statisticians, educators, students\nand other microbiome stakeholders who are openly sharing methods, data and knowledge\nto advance microbiome research.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A\nglobal community effort<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Caporaso said QIIME 2 is a community effort that his team is\nleading. Collaborators on the project represent 77 research institutions from nine\ncountries: Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Italy, South Korea, the Netherlands,\nAustralia and the United Kingdom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n NAU research software engineers Evan Bolyen<\/strong>, Matthew Dillon <\/strong>and Jai Ram\nRideout <\/strong>performed the primary development of QIIME 2, along with postdoctoral\nscholar Nicholas Bokulich<\/strong>.\nAdditional NAU collaborators include faculty researchers Paul Keim<\/strong>, Emily Cope<\/strong>\nand Tal Pearson;<\/strong> research staff Jorden Kreps<\/strong> and Charles HD Williamson<\/strong>; and students John Chase<\/strong>, Kestrel Gorlick<\/strong>,\nChris<\/strong> Keefe<\/strong>, Ahmad Turan Naimey<\/strong>\nand Arron Shiffer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAdvances in microbiome research promise to improve many aspects\nof our health and our world, and QIIME 2 will help drive those advances by\nenabling accessible, community-driven microbiome data science,\u201d Caporaso said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caporaso and others on the team have\nalready led 25 workshops for QIIME 2 users all over the world, including two\nworkshops at the National Institutes for Health\u2014each one attracting 75\nparticipants\u2014as well as a workshop for 40 students in Copenhagen, Denmark, conducted\nin June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To learn more about\nQIIME 2, visit https:\/\/qiime2.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Image derived from DOI 10.1038\/s41587-019-0209-9 published in Nature Biotechnology<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>See paper for list of authors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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