My obsession with a Field Guide for Microbes

Recently I gave a talk at the AAAS Meeting in Vancouver on my dream of having "A Field Guide to the Microbes".  The talk was part of a session on the "Earth Microbiome Project" organized by Jack Gilbert and others.

You can see a slideshow with audio of my talk below:

It seems that my talk has sparked a lot of interest as I have been interviewed by various people and publications about this concept.

For example, Holly Menninger recently interviewed me for a blog post for the "Your Wild Life" blog:
Is a Field Guide for Microbes in Our Future? Q & A with Microbiologist Jonathan Eisen.

And today a wonderfully illustrated piece came out at Wired.Com by Daniela Hernandez titled "Book of Germs: A Quest for a Field Guide to Microbes."

If you are interested in some more background on what I have been thinking about a Field Guide to the Microbes here are some previous things I have written or said or commented on relating to this topic:

• Editorial I wrote in 2009 w/ Catrionna MacCallum for a collection of articles in PLoS Journals on the Genomics of Emerging Infectious Diseases: PLoS Biology: Genomics of Emerging Infectious Disease: A PLoS .  It has a box on a Field Guide to the Microbes. 
• Microbe Magazine Article interviewing me: Genomic Analyses Could Lead to “Field Guide to Microbes”
• Press release from project in 2005: Poison + water = hydrogen. New microbial genome shows how
• Talk I gave in November 2011 at the Compass Summit on 'The Dark Matter of Biology." 

And if you want to check out some "Field Guide" like books on the topic of microbes I am posting some recommendations on an Amazon Page. My favorite is "A Field Guide to Bacteria" by Betsey Dyer.