Metagenomics – Gracyn K

Metagenomics is a big concept and one of the fastest advancing fields in biology. Essentially, it’s a way to learn about microscopic communities by studying the DNA in an environment. They do this by taking a sample from an environment and analyzing its genes and DNA. Because it allows us to see these microscopic ecosystems that we couldn’t before, metagenomics allows us to study microbial ecology (study of microorganisms relationship with each other and their environment) at a greater scale and helps us to understand the whole living word.

Before metagenomics, when scientists had to culture (grow and breed) microorganisms in a lab to be able to learn about them, they were only able to culture 2% of the microbes from the samples they were getting. With metagenomics, scientists are now able to learn about the other 98%.

How it works:

Metagenomics works by first taking a sample in an environment. This sample should be a representative of the whole environment. The sample could be some soil, a food sample, or a sample from somewhere in the body.

They then extract some DNA from the sample. The DNA they extract needs to represent all the cells in the sample.

Next is copying some of the DNA in the sample. They copy it using PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, which is a technique where they can take a piece of DNA and amplify it to make millions of copies of that specific DNA sequence.

From here they start DNA sequencing. DNA sequencing uses technology to determine the exact order of all the nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) in a DNA molecule.

With this information they analyze the data to figure out which microbes are in that sample. These samples are meant to represent the entire environment, so that we can have an idea of what’s in the entire area.

How it’s used:

Metagenomics is best used for us to learn about the organisms that we didn’t know about before, like what’s there and what are they doing there. Examples of places where they might take samples of are skin, mouth, and other organs to try to understand human diseases, water samples to learn what’s in the water, or a soil sample to learn what’s in that environment. One sample can contain more than 10 000 species.

Advancements from Metagenomics:

Metagenomics has greatly improved our knowledge about microorganisms. It has helped us find new microbes that we didn’t know of before. It helped us discover new archaea, such as one called Nanoarchauem, and learn that they aren’t only found in extreme environments but can also be found in places like gardens. It has also helped us find new fungal species and new bacteria. Another advancements was discovering that viruses can be found on land as well as marine environments, and learning about new advances on how we can prevent viruses from humans.

The Future with Metagenomics:

One example of how metagenomics can help the future is with our studying of Mars. Metagenomics can help us to find extraterrestrials on Mars by taking a sample from Mars and seeing what they can find from it. Another example is with finding diseases in humans and other animals and learning about how they work, as well as more advancements with discovering new microorganisms in the future.

Watch this video to learn more about metagenomics: