Metagenomics- A More Comrehensive View of Microbial Communities.
Metagenomics is the culture-independent genomic analysis of microbial communities. The term is derived from the statistical concept of meta-analysis (the process of statistically combining separate analyses) and genomics (the comprehensive analysis of an organisms genetic material). Metagenomics can be used to address the challenge of studying prokaryotes in the environment that are, as yet, unculturable and which represent more than 99% of the organisms in some environments.
from- Biotechnological prospects from metagenomics (Patrick D Schloss and, Jo Handelsman).
Historical Perspective:
The development of cultivation-independent phylogenetic surveys using ribosomal RNA (rRNA) sequencing3, 17 and fluorescence in situ hybridization4 set the stage for contemporary environmental genomic studies. Soon after their development, rRNA-based phylogenetic survey techniques using the then-novel technique polymerase chain reaction (PCR) revealed the widespread distribution and abundance of several previously unrecognized marine microbial groups, including Pelagibacter (also known as SAR11)18, abundant new groups of planktonic marine Archaea19, 20, 21 and novel eukaryotic picoplankton22, to list a few examples.