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A 123 of Metagenomics

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Encyclopedia of Metagenomics

Introduction

Microbial ecology aims to comprehensively describe the diversity and function of microorganisms in the environment. Culturing, microscopy, and chemical or biological assays were not too long ago the main tools in this field. Molecular methods, such as 16S rRNA gene sequencing, were applied to environmental systems in the 1990s and started to uncover a remarkable diversity of organisms (Barns et al. 1994). Soon, the thirst for describing microbial systems was no longer satisfied by the knowledge of the diversity of just one or a few genes. Thus, approaches were developed to describe the total genetic diversity of a given environment (Riesenfeld et al. 2004). One such approach is metagenomics, which involves sequencing the total DNA extracted from environmental samples. Arguably, metagenomics has been the fastest growing field of microbiology in the last few years and has almost become a routine practice. The learning curve in the field has been steep, and many obstacles...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences & Centre for Marine Bio-Innovation, University of New South Wales, 2052, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Torsten Thomas

  2. Department of Ecology & Evolution, University of Chicago, 1101 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Jack Gilbert

  3. Institute of Genomic and Systems Biology, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL, 60439, USA

    Folker Meyer

Authors
  1. Torsten Thomas
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  2. Jack Gilbert
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  3. Folker Meyer
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Correspondence to Torsten Thomas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD, USA

    Karen E. Nelson

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Thomas, T., Gilbert, J., Meyer, F. (2015). A 123 of Metagenomics. In: Nelson, K.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metagenomics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7478-5_728

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