This is the third and final episode of our series on a giant metagenome assembly from Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota. In the last two episodes, we’ve covered the specialized software and supercomputers behind this project. But every part of this project depends on lakewater samples — so this episode is a look at how researchers get these specialized snapshots of a freshwater ecosystem.

Links from this episode:

• Submit your own proposal to work with the JGI
• Find all episode transcripts on our website
• Related papers: 
  • Species invasions shift microbial phenology in a two-decade freshwater time series
  • Terabase-Scale Coassembly of a Tropical Soil Microbiome
• Our contact info:
  • Twitter: @JGI
  • Email: jgi-comms at lbl dot gov