ENIGMA— Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies—seeks to advance understanding of microbial biology and the impact of microbial communities on their ecosystems. Team members collaborate closely to generate detailed quantitative understanding across scales—from molecular to cellular and community levels. Scientists within ENIGMA have the technological and scientific skills and experience to link environmental microbiological field-studies to both highly advanced field and laboratory meta-functional genomic and genetics tools. This capability, the ability to rapidly assess gene content and expressed functions of environmental microbes, and bring them to model-organism status in the laboratory, can be effectively applied to microbial communities.
Established in 2009, growing out of the VIMSS project, ENIGMA is a multi-institutional consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through its Scientific Focus Area (SFA) grant program and managed by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).