Tom Ruttink is coordinator of the Genomics Platform at the Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research (ILVO). This platform implements NGS technology and bioinformatics tools for high resolution genetic profiling of agriculturally important plant and animal species and microbial communities. We focus on the identification of genetic regulatory pathways underlying agriculturally important traits using comparative genomics, gene discovery and expression analysis, and study the dynamics of genome composition of populations in response to environmental cues. We study microbial communities in various environmental niches through taxonomic and functional profiling using metagenomics and metatranscriptomics.