Chistoserdova Ludmila
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
Microb Biotechnol. 2014 Jan;7(1):1-4. doi: 10.1111/1751-7915.12077. Epub 2013 Aug 15.
We are coming up on the tenth anniversary of the broad use of the method involving whole metagenome shotgun sequencing, referred to as metagenomics. The application of this approach has definitely revolutionized microbiology and the related fields, including the realization of the importance of the human microbiome. As such, metagenomics has already provided a novel outlook on the complexity and dynamics of microbial communities that are an important part of the biosphere of the planet. Accumulation of massive amounts of sequence data also caused a surge in the development of bioinformatics tools specially designed to provide pipelines for data analysis and visualization. However, a critical outlook into the field is required to appreciate what could be and what has currently been gained from the massive sequence databases that are being generated with ever-increasing speed.
我们即将迎来涉及全基因组鸟枪法测序方法（即宏基因组学）广泛应用的十周年。这种方法的应用无疑给微生物学及相关领域带来了变革，包括让人们认识到人类微生物组的重要性。因此，宏基因组学已经为作为地球生物圈重要组成部分的微生物群落的复杂性和动态性提供了全新的视角。大量序列数据的积累也促使专门为数据分析和可视化提供流程的生物信息学工具大量涌现。然而，需要以批判性的眼光审视该领域，才能明白从正以越来越快的速度生成的海量序列数据库中可能获得什么以及目前已经获得了什么。
