Abstract
Together, molecular biology and genomics have made it possible to explore the diversity and ecology of the 99 per cent of microbes that cannot be cultured in laboratories. ‘Genomics and the microbial world’ considers environmental gene sequencing; metagenomics, the isolation and analysis of large DNA fragments taken directly from the environment; and single-cell genomics and transcriptomics. It also examines the human microbiome; it is now clear that a complex array of factors contribute to the establishment and maintenance of the human microbiome over the course of a lifetime. Bioprospecting in the metagenomics era is also discussed along with the ambitious Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea project.
