Welcome! This page is intended for collaborators participating in the second phase of the Earth Microbiome Project — the metagenomic sequencing and metabolomic profiling of five hundred microbial communities from diverse sites on our planet — informally called the EMP500. We are not currently accepting new samples. If you are not currently involved in this effort but are interested in contributing samples in the future, please contact Dr. Luke Thompson for more information.
For this new EMP effort, we have developed new protocols for metagenomic sequencing and assembly, with the goal of applying this workflow to a range of environmental samples, combined with metabolomic profiling. Our goal was to assemble a set of ~500 fresh environmental samples across a range of habitats, with the help of the EMP network of collaborators. We are doing traditional EMP amplicon sequencing, metagenomic sequencing (with assembly-free and assembly-based analysis), and metabolomics on these 500 samples. A biobank of frozen aliquots of samples is being maintained at UCSD (soil samples at PNNL) for future methods testing and analysis.
Samples for this study were to meet the following criteria:

• Fresh or frozen sample (no preservatives) in ~10 aliquots
• Metadata well characterized
• Large proportion of unmapped diversity in at least some samples
• Non-human-associated and non-human-perturbed samples

Detailed instructions for submitting samples and preparing metadata are here:

• EMP500 Sample Submission Guide
• EMP Metadata Guide (new for EMP500)