A list of SPAAM commmunity projects
Here we provide a list of projects run by the SPAAM community that to assist in progressing the field.
- AncientMetagenomeDir
- Ancient Metagenomics Labs
- MINAS MIxS Checklist
- SPAAM Summer Schools
- SPAAM Blog
- SPAAMtisch
AncientMetagenomeDir
AncientMetagenomeDir is a community curated resource of lists of all published shotgun-sequenced ancient metagenome samples. It is primarily meant to act as a reference guide to help point researchers toward any relevant public data for comparative analysis. It is hoped it will help researchers track growth and development of the field of ancient metagenomics over time.
- The AncientMetagenomeDir website can be found here.
- The repository containing sample lists is hosted on github here
Contact person(s): James Fellows Yates
Ancient Metagenomics Labs
The SPAAM community also curate a list of known labs working in ancient metagenomics with an aim to help improve collaboration by making labs around the world more visible.
The list of labs can be found here
Contact person(s): James Fellows Yates
MINAS MIxS Checklist
Metadata about samples and data is crucial for the implementation of FAIR principles. Providing rich metadata also helps researchers to improve the quality of their work, allowing further insights into their and previously published data.
An issue for the existing MIxS checklists, is they are designed for modern sequence data, and are missing critical metadata fields, and/or include fields that have definitions that do not fit well in an ancient context.
To facilitate improved metadata reporting in paleogenomics, the SPAAM community are establishing a working group to develop a MIxS extension checklist designed specifically for ancient metagenomics, as well as collaborating with a working group in ancient human population genetics to develop a more general checklist for ancient DNA, provisionally called the ‘MInAS’ checklist (Minimum INformation about Ancient Sequences’).
The MInAS website can be found here. Please join the SPAAM Slack workspace and #metadata-standards channel to join the working group.
Contact person(s): James Fellows Yates and Antonio Fernandez-Guerra
SPAAM Summer Schools
To help widely disseminate knowledge and expertise in ancient metagenomics, groups in the SPAAM community offer various training workshops.
These will occur on either on a regular basis or as on-off events, so generally please keep an eye on the events page, as well as the various social media channels.
We will list regular events here, as well as those that make their training material availble online for self learning:
- Annually
- Website & Material: https://spaam-community.github.io/wss-summer-school/
- Supported by: Werner Siemens-Stiftung, Hans Knöll Institute, MHAAM, MPI-EVA, JSMC
Contact person(s): James Fellows Yates and Christina Warinner
SPAAM Blog
The SPAAM community hosts a blog that hosts posts from members on a wide-range of ancient metagenomics topics, such as short deep-dive into technical methods, or summarising discussions of questions posted in the slack channel. You can request or post posts on the #spaam-blog channel on the SPAAM slack workspace.
You can see all blog posts here.
Contact person(s): Ele Green and Shreya Ramachandran
SPAAMtisch
The community has a monthly online get-together on the SPAAM gather.town space for those who want to discuss some topics of interest chosen by the community, and in an informal and stress-free way! No knowledge or preparation required!
More information and topics can be found on the #spaamtisch channel on the SPAAM slack workspace.
Contact person(s): Maria Lopopolo
