Microorganisms are found throughout every corner of nature, and vast number of microorganisms is difficult to cultivate by classical microbiological techniques. The advent of metagenomics has revolutionized the field of microbial biotechnology. Metagenomics allow the recovery of genetic material directly from environmental niches without any cultivation techniques. Currently, metagenomic tools are widely employed as powerful tools to isolate and identify enzymes with novel biocatalytic activities from the uncultivable component of microbial communities. The employment of next-generation sequencing techniques for metagenomics resulted in the generation of large sequence data sets derived from various environments, such as soil, the human body and ocean water. This review article describes the state-of-the-art techniques and tools in metagenomics and discusses the potential of metagenomic approaches for the bioprospecting of industrial enzymes from various environmental samples. We also describe the unusual novel enzymes discovered via metagenomic approaches and discuss the future prospects for metagenome technologies.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12010-017-2568-3 | DOI Listing |
BMC Microbiol
January 2025
School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in soil is an ancient phenomenon with widespread spatial presence in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the natural processes shaping the temporal dissemination of AMR in soils are not well understood. We aimed to determine whether, how, and why AMR varies with soil age in recently deglaciated pioneer and developing Arctic soils using a space-for-time approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGut
January 2025
Microbiome-Host Interactions, INSERM U1306, CNRS UMR6047, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France
Background: Non-absorbed dietary emulsifiers, including carboxymethylcellulose (CMC), directly disturb intestinal microbiota, thereby promoting chronic intestinal inflammation in mice. A randomised controlled-feeding study (Functional Research on Emulsifiers in Humans, FRESH) found that CMC also detrimentally impacts intestinal microbiota in some, but not all, healthy individuals.
Objectives: This study aimed to establish an approach for predicting an individual's sensitivity to dietary emulsifiers via their baseline microbiota.
Comput Biol Med
January 2025
Turku Bioscience Centre, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, FI-20520, Turku, Finland; Institute of Biomedicine, University of Turku, FI-20520, Turku, Finland. Electronic address:
With advances in sequencing technologies, the use of high-throughput sequencing to characterize microbial communities is becoming increasingly feasible. However, metagenomic assembly poses computational challenges in reconstructing genes and organisms from complex samples. To address this issue, we introduce a new concept called Adaptive Sequence Alignment (ASA) for analyzing metagenomic DNA sequence data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnzymatic asymmetric synthesis of l-phenylglycine by amino acid dehydrogenases has potential for industrial applications; however, this is hindered by their low catalytic efficiency toward high-concentration substrates. We identified and characterized a novel leucine dehydrogenase (LeuDH) with a high catalytic efficiency for benzoylformic acid via directed metagenomic approaches. Further, we obtained a triple-point mutant LeuDH-EER (D332E/G333E/L334R) with improved stability and catalytic efficiency through the rational design of distal loop 13.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe increasing availability of microbial genomes is essential to gain insights into microbial ecology and evolution that can propel biotechnological and biomedical advances. Recent advances in genome recovery have significantly expanded the catalogue of microbial genomes from diverse habitats. However, the ability to explain how well a set of genomes account for the diversity in a given environment remains challenging for individual studies or biome-specific databases.
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