Metagenomic Analyses: Past and Future Trends

Metagenomics has revolutionized microbiology by paving the way for a cultivation-independent assessment and exploitation of microbial communities present in complex ecosystems. Metagenomics comprising construction and screening of metagenomic DNA libraries has proven to be a powerful tool to isolate new enzymes and drugs of industrial importance. So far, the majority of the metagenomically exploited habitats comprised temperate environments, such as soil and marine environments. Recently, metagenomes of extreme environments have also been used as sources of novel biocatalysts. The employment of next-generation sequencing techniques for metagenomics resulted in the generation of large sequence data sets derived…

• DF
  Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
• BF
  Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung