MetXtra - An Integrated High-Throughput Metagenomics Platform for Enzyme Discovery

目前，所有微生物中只有一小部分（约1%）可以在实验室中培养，从而对其dna进行测序。因此，从剩余的99%未培养微生物的环境样本中，仍有大量的基因序列数据有待发现。宏基因组学领域直接对生活在环境中的微生物进行采样，从而避免了在DNA测序之前进行实验室培养的需要。宏基因组项目可以产生非常大量的DNA序列数据，而利用这些数据进行酶发现的主要瓶颈是实际的数据分析。biocalysts Ltd和EMBL-EBI之间的项目目标是开发一种新颖独特的数据分析软件平台MetXtra，用于快速有效地从大型宏基因组DNA序列文库中鉴定工业生物技术（IB）应用的全新酶。

Only a tiny fraction (~1%) of all microorganisms can currently be grown in the laboratory and hence have theirDNA sequenced. Thus, there is a huge wealth of genetic sequence data still to be discovered fromenvironmental samples of the remaining 99% of uncultured microorganisms. The field of metagenomicsdirectly samples microorganisms living in the environment, thereby avoiding the need for laboratory culturingbefore DNA sequencing. Metagenomics projects can yield very large amounts of DNA sequence data and themajor bottleneck to exploiting this data for enzyme discovery is the actual data analysis. The objective of thisproject between Biocatalysts Ltd and EMBL-EBI is to develop a novel and unique data analysis softwareplatform, MetXtra, for the rapid and efficient identification of completely novel enzymes for IndustrialBiotechnology (IB) applications from large metagenomic DNA sequence libraries.