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Why metagenomics?
- A short description
"Microbes run the world". Microbes are involved in essentially every process in the biosphere.
Sequencing the whole genome of a microbe and then applying various computational approaches to
analyzing the genome data is becoming the way to get to know the microbes.
But scientists can never be satisfied with the pace of discovering microbes genome by genome.
Ever since Tyson et al sequenced a sample retrieved directly from a natural community
(the drainage conduits of an abandoned mine in northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains)
and Venter et al sequenced the seawater sample (collected from the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda) in the same year (2004),
nothing can stop scientists from sequencing all kinds of microbial communities (including those in human and mouse guts!).
The base pairs resulting from the metagenomics projects (enviromental sequences) far outnumbered
what have been accumulated previously. Managing and analyzing the huge amount of sequence data
from metagenomics projects is challenging. But we like challenges, do not we!
- Read this article: Metagenomics: A Call for Bringing a New Science into the Classroom (While It's Still New). CBE Life Sci Educ 6(4): 260-265 2007 (paper link)