Global Ocean Sampling Expedition

The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) is an Ocean exploration Genome project with the goal of assessing the genetic diversity in marine microbial communities and to understand their role in nature's fundamental processes. Begun as a Sargasso Sea pilot sampling project in August 2003, Craig Venter announced the full Expedition on 4 March 2004. The project, which used Craig Venter's personal sloop, Sorcerer II, started in Halifax, Canada and circumnavigated the globe finishing back in the U.S. in January 2006. The expedition sampled water from Halifax, Nova Scotia to the Eastern Tropical Pacific while undertaking a two year circumnavigation. Associated with the The Center for the Advancement of Genomics, J. Craig Venter Institute, the project has been cited by at least five scientific papers as of Mar 07.

Data Analysis
To manage the data, an online database was launched along with a project called the Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis (CAMERA) developed by UC San Diego's Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) in partnership with JCVI and UCSD’s Center for Earth Observations and Applications (CEOA) at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Funding
The Sorcerer II effort has been funded by:
 * the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Sequencing and analysis)
 * the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science (Sequencing and analysis)
 * The J. Craig Venter Institute (vessel operation)
 * Moore Foundation seven year, $24.5 million, grant (CAMERA)

Links

 * GOS on PLoS, a Open Access Journal. Much information to source from this link for this article.