Methods in Metagenomics and Environmental Biotechnology

Microbes are integral part of our environment. They have enormous industrial and medicinal applications. Even they play a crucial role during digestion where they are present in the form of gut flora. Genomic sequences are a prerequisite for molecular taxonomic characterization of novel microbes, and traditional microbiology is dependent on clone cultures for DNA extraction of a specific microbe population. As a result vast varieties of species are missed since most of the microbes cannot be cultured in laboratory conditions. Metagenomics skips the requirement of culturing the microbes in lab as it studies genetic material which is directly taken from environmental samples. Microorganisms are of great significance due to their applications in health, agriculture, and industry. Direct DNA sequencing of environmental samples has given opportunity to gather information about the microorganisms that were unexplored so far. Screening of useful bacteria that survive in different environmental conditions like heavily polluted soil, disease-affected tissues or cells, oil-contaminated water bodies, heavy metal-contaminated fields, etc. can be done easily by combining environmental and metagenomics approaches. The data obtained from environmental sample sequencing may be of great use in discovery of new drugs and antibiotics, new bacterial species, plant growth promoters, bioremediation as well as in many other industrial applications. The number of metagenomic studies has increased significantly in recent years, and it is believed that this trend will continue its pace due to huge applicability. This chapter also provides significant elaborations about methodology and tools, experimental design strategies, online resources, and databases applicable in metagenomic data analysis.