Metagenomics

What is Metagenomics

  • study of microbial communities directly in their natural environments, including
    • skin, mouth, and gut samples to understand human related diseases,
    • soil samples to study plant soil-microbe interactions, and
    • marine water samples 
  • metagenomics does not require isolation and culturing of individual microbes: 'culture independent'
  • focus on microbial communities: a sample can contain more than 10,000 species


What is a microbiome?
  • the complete set of microbes that live in a particular microbial ecosystem: within and on the human body (human microbiome), specific plants (grapevine microbiome), or marine areas
  • includes also the entire collection of microbial genes provided by these microbial communities

Introduction and current literature

The Human Microbiome
PDF, Infographic and handout from the American Academy of Microbiology

How the microbiome shapes our world.
TED interview with Jonathan Eisen, Jessica Green, & Rob Knight

Staying Current in Bioinformatics & Genomics
How to find out the most recent trends in Genomics, by Stephen Turner
recently published microbiology papers, selected by Elisabeth Bik

Subpages (1): Glossary