The exploitation of metagenomics and meta-omics approaches in life science research; community network in metagenomics

微生物在我们的环境中起着至关重要的作用，它们占据了从我们的肠道和体表到海底热喷口的广泛栖息地，它们在土壤中对营养物质的循环和植物健康至关重要，并负责消化在牛的专门胃（称为瘤胃）中分解的草中的纤维素，以及通过收获在海洋中进行的全球碳循环。许多细菌可以进行光合作用，从而收集光能来固定二氧化碳。我们研究这些微生物的生理学和整体活动的能力存在一个主要问题，因为我们无法在实验室中分离和培养绝大多数（可能超过98%）。我们知道它们的存在，因为我们使用了类似于DNA法医方法的方法，仅根据它们的DNA使用签名基因来检测它们，这使我们能够识别和分组它们。这种多样性大多是细菌，但也有几组真菌。正在开发新的方法来研究这些微生物种群，这被称为宏基因组学，这样我们就可以将微生物群落作为许多基因组的种群来研究，而不是试图分离和研究一个。我们可以通过提取和分析DNA进行多样性分析，RNA用于基因表达，蛋白质用于确认活动和代谢产物以确定生理学来研究我们肠道或土壤中的这一群体。此外，我们可以提取DNA并在其他可培养的细菌中表达。这使我们能够捕获DNA并表达它，从而深入了解某些功能，例如具有特殊性质的特定酶或色素。拟议工作的目的是建立一个学术合作伙伴网络，以建立这一重要科学领域的能力，确保我们能够研究和利用细菌种群的所有有趣和令人兴奋的属性，并利用它们实现可持续的未来。

Microrganisms play a vital role in our environment they occupy a wide range of habitats from our onw gut and body surfaces all the way to hot vents under the sea, they are critical in the soil for recycling of nutrients and plant health and responsible for the essential digestion of cellulose from grass being broken down in the specialised stomach of the cow termed the rumen to the global cycling of carbon in the oceans via harvesting of sunlight as many bacteria can photosynthesize and thus harvest light energy to fix carbon dioxide. A major problem exists in our ability to study the physiology and overall activities of these microbes due to the fact that we cannot isolate and cultivate (yet) the vast majority (probably over 98%) of them in the laboratory. We know they exist because we have used methods similar to DNA forensic approaches to detect them solely based on their DNA using signature genes which allow us to identify and group them. Most of this diversity is bacterial but there are also several groups of fungi. New methods are being developed for the study of these microbial populations and this is called metagenomics so that we study the microbial community as a population of many genomes rather than trying to isolate and study one. We can study this population in our guts or in the soil by extracting and analysing DNA for diversity analysis, RNA for gene expression and protein for confirmation of activities and metabolites to determine physiology. In addition we can extract DNA and express it in other bacteria which are culturable. This allows us to capture the DNA and express it thus gaining an insight into some functions such as specific enzymes or pigments with special properties. The imof the proposed work is to establish a network of academic partners to build capacity in this important area of science to ensure that we are able to study and exploit all the interesting and exciting attributes of bacterial populations and harness them for a sustainable future.