Microbes 'Run The World': Metagenomics Increasingly Used To Characterize Them

Monday, September 29, 2008 - 21:35 in Biology & Nature

Mostly hidden from the scrutiny of the naked eye, microbes have been said to run the world. The challenge is how best to characterize them given that less than one percent of the estimated hundreds of millions of microbial species can be cultured in the laboratory. The answer is metagenomics -- an increasingly popular approach for extracting the genomes of uncultured microorganisms and discerning their specific metabolic capabilities directly from environmental samples. Ten years after the term was coined, metagenomics is going mainstream and already paying provocative dividends in the areas of energy and environment.

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