1. Comparative metagenomics of microbial communities
- Author
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Kevin Chen, Eric J. Mathur, Hwai W. Chang, Peer Bork, Mircea Podar, Philip Hugenholtz, Christian von Mering, Arthur Kobayashi, Susannah G. Tringe, Jay M. Short, John C. Detter, Edward M. Rubin, and Asaf Salamov
- Subjects
Proteome ,Molecular Sequence Data ,Genomics ,Computational biology ,Biology ,complex mixtures ,Genome ,Polymerase Chain Reaction ,Bone and Bones ,Data sequences ,Bacterial Proteins ,Operon ,Metagenomics: An Alternative Approach to Genomics ,Animals ,Seawater ,Ecosystem ,Phylogeny ,Soil Microbiology ,Gene Library ,Multidisciplinary ,Bacteria ,Shotgun sequencing ,Ecology ,fungi ,Whales ,Life Sciences ,Computational Biology ,Proteins ,Biodiversity ,Sequence Analysis, DNA ,Archaea ,Eukaryotic Cells ,Microbial population biology ,Genes ,Metagenomics ,Genes, Bacterial ,Biofilms ,bacteria ,Identification (biology) ,Energy Metabolism ,Genome, Bacterial - Abstract
The species complexity of microbial communities and challenges in culturing representative isolates make it difficult to obtain assembled genomes. Here we characterize and compare the metabolic capabilities of terrestrial and marine microbial communities using largely unassembled sequence data obtained by shotgun sequencing DNA isolated from the various environments. Quantitative gene content analysis reveals habitat-specific fingerprints that reflect known characteristics of the sampled environments. The identification of environment-specific genes through a gene-centric comparative analysis presents new opportunities for interpreting and diagnosing environments.
- Published
- 2005