Sequencing and beyond: integrating molecular 'omics' for microbial community profiling.

Nat Rev Microbiol

1] Biostatistics Department, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. [2] The Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.

Published: June 2015

High-throughput DNA sequencing has proven invaluable for investigating diverse environmental and host-associated microbial communities. In this Review, we discuss emerging strategies for microbial community analysis that complement and expand traditional metagenomic profiling. These include novel DNA sequencing strategies for identifying strain-level microbial variation and community temporal dynamics; measuring multiple 'omic' data types that better capture community functional activity, such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics; and combining multiple forms of omic data in an integrated framework. We highlight studies in which the 'multi-omics' approach has led to improved mechanistic models of microbial community structure and function.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4800835PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3451DOI Listing

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