– ABOUT

Australian microbiome

Australia’s diverse terrestrial and coastal environments are home to essential microbial communities, playing crucial roles in ecosystem health and functioning. Despite their microscopic size, microbes drive various environmental processes and influence both the environment and living organisms. They are integral to global biogeochemical cycles and contribute to human and environmental well-being, including disease management.

From its outset in 2020, the mission of the Australian Microbiome (AM) project has been to develop a comprehensive, publicly-accessible database of microbial diversity across a geographically expansive and diverse range of Australian terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The AM database delivers searchable information on the occurrence and distribution of potential microbiological resources, collated into a searchable public database that allows researchers and other end-users to address a broad variety of questions in microbial ecology.

By providing unprecedented access to environmental microbiological information across the Australian land- and sea-scape, the AM project enables large spatial and temporal- scale examinations of ecosystem function, biogeochemistry, bio-discovery, within natural Australian habitats.