Microbes make life on Earth possible. Although a miniscule fraction of them can cause diseases, the vast majority of microbes—life forms too tiny to see—are actually essential to keeping us alive. From helping us digest food to maintaining the atmospheric conditions that make Earth livable, microbes actually do a lot of good for the health of humans and our environment.
An exciting new field called metagenomics offers a powerful lens for viewing the microbial world that has the potential to revolutionize understanding of the entire living world.
The National Research Council report The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet (2007) describes the promises and challenges of this emerging field.
Understanding Our Microbial Planet, an educational booklet derived from that report, provides basic information on metagenomics for the general audience.
What is so exciting about metagenomics?
In metagenomics, the power
of genomic analysis (the analysis of all the DNA in an organism) is applied to entire communities of microbes, bypassing the need to
isolate and culture individual microbial species. This new science opens doors to a tremendous amount of scientific exploration.
Metagenomics will vastly enhance our knowledge of microbial communities and could lead to practical applications in...
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Support for this web publication was provided by the Presidents' Circle Communication Initiative of the National Academies.
