Kumar Satish, Krishnani Kishore Kumar, Bhushan Bharat, Brahmane Manoj Pandit
ICAR-National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Baramati, Pune, Maharashtra 413115, India.
ICAR-Central Institute of Post-Harvest Engineering and Technology, Abohar Station, Punjab 152116, India.
Biotechnol Res Int. 2015;2015:121735. doi: 10.1155/2015/121735. Epub 2015 Nov 17.
In recent years, metagenomics has emerged as a powerful tool for mining of hidden microbial treasure in a culture independent manner. In the last two decades, metagenomics has been applied extensively to exploit concealed potential of microbial communities from almost all sorts of habitats. A brief historic progress made over the period is discussed in terms of origin of metagenomics to its current state and also the discovery of novel biological functions of commercial importance from metagenomes of diverse habitats. The present review also highlights the paradigm shift of metagenomics from basic study of community composition to insight into the microbial community dynamics for harnessing the full potential of uncultured microbes with more emphasis on the implication of breakthrough developments, namely, Next Generation Sequencing, advanced bioinformatics tools, and systems biology.
近年来，宏基因组学已成为一种强大的工具，能够以不依赖培养的方式挖掘隐藏的微生物宝藏。在过去二十年中，宏基因组学已被广泛应用于探索几乎所有栖息地微生物群落的潜在能力。本文从宏基因组学的起源到其当前状态，讨论了这一时期取得的简要历史进展，还探讨了从不同栖息地宏基因组中发现具有商业重要性的新生物功能。本综述还强调了宏基因组学的范式转变，即从对群落组成的基础研究转向深入了解微生物群落动态，以充分发挥未培养微生物的潜力，更加强调了突破性进展的影响，即下一代测序、先进的生物信息学工具和系统生物学。
