Introduction
Metagenomics was only introduced a few years ago, in 1998. It was introduced as an alternate form of microbiology about how genetics and microbes in a community interact with each other without studying one particular organism in particular. Since organisms typically don’t live completely isolated for their whole life, they need to be studied in a controlled environment amongst other organisms they would live and grow with.
The greatest advancements in metagenomics
One of the larger advancements in metagenomics took place in a study in the Baltic sea in Europe. The scientists who performed this study targeted bacterioplankton in the deepest area of the sea, at 459m. While conducting the study they compared their findings to a similar study done in 1991 that stated that the salinity in the water might be influencing the bacterial growth in the water. As they compared their findings, they found that the degree of the growth was much larger than they had anticipated it was in 1991, in point of fact they have concluded that the Baltic sea contains a higher amount of variation of bacteria than most other marine environments.
How is the form of metagenomics being used?
Metagenomics is a tool used to analyze DNA from samples of environments to review the community of microorganisms. Metagenomic scientists isolate the DNA and RNA from the received sample without identifying a particular organism. The DNA and RNA are then put through different procedures such as DNA sequencing to identify common genes.
How metagenomics changes the future
Metagenomics has been used in food production in recent years to diagnose pathogens. In the future scientists are hoping that it will be routine to do diagnostics and they will be able to recognize and extract or remove the foodborne pathogen if necessary. If this is possible to do, there will be less or even possibly no illness outbreaks in produce.
Citations:
Wooley, John C, and Yuzhen Ye. Metagenomics: Facts and Artifacts, and Computational Challenges*. Jan. 2009, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2905821/.
10. Alneberg, BS. Bjarnason, et al. “Microbial Metagenomics in the Baltic Sea: Recent Advancements and Prospects for Environmental Monitoring.” Ambio, Springer Netherlands, 1 Jan. 1970, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-015-0663-7#Sec6.
National Research Council (US) Committee on Metagenomics: Challenges and Functional Applications. “Why Metagenomics?” The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Jan. 1970, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK54011/.
Forbes, Jessica D., et al. “Metagenomics: The Next Culture-Independent Game Changer.” Frontiers, Frontiers, 29 May 2017, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2017.01069/full.
