Metagenomics a modern approach to reveal the secrets of unculturable microbes (Chapter 12)

Abstract

Recent developments in science have recognized that culture-based method is inefficient in recognizing most (99 percent) of the unculturable microorganisms inhabiting the planet Earth. This fact stimulated the development of a metagenomic technique that is capable of bypassing the need of culturing the microbes in the laboratory. In the metagenomic approach, DNA extracted directly from any sample is used for the construction of the metagenomic library. This library can be screened either by a function-based approach or a sequence-based approach. Both the screening approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages. Metagenomics has revolutionized the science in microbial ecology and has so far resulted in the discovery of some of the novel biocatalytic molecules of industrial importance. Using this approach in near future, along with the advancements of screening methods and bioinformatics analysis, will enrich the knowledge of the scientific community in solving problems that have been unanswered by the culture-based approach.