Marine metagenomics: strategies for the discovery of novel enzymes with biotechnological applications from marine environments
Open Access
- 21 August 2008
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Microbial Cell Factories
- Vol. 7 (1), 27
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2859-7-27
Abstract
Metagenomic based strategies have previously been successfully employed as powerful tools to isolate and identify enzymes with novel biocatalytic activities from the unculturable component of microbial communities from various terrestrial environmental niches. Both sequence based and function based screening approaches have been employed to identify genes encoding novel biocatalytic activities and metabolic pathways from metagenomic libraries. While much of the focus to date has centred on terrestrial based microbial ecosystems, it is clear that the marine environment has enormous microbial biodiversity that remains largely unstudied. Marine microbes are both extremely abundant and diverse; the environments they occupy likewise consist of very diverse niches. As culture-dependent methods have thus far resulted in the isolation of only a tiny percentage of the marine microbiota the application of metagenomic strategies holds great potential to study and exploit the enormous microbial biodiversity which is present within these marine environments.Keywords
This publication has 91 references indexed in Scilit:
- Retrieval of entire genes from environmental DNA by inverse PCR with pre‐amplification of target genes using primers containing locked nucleic acidsEnvironmental Microbiology, 2008
- Characterization of a novel non-specific nuclease from thermophilic bacteriophage GBSV1BMC Biotechnology, 2008
- Dissecting biological “dark matter” with single-cell genetic analysis of rare and uncultivated TM7 microbes from the human mouthProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- Matching phylogeny and metabolism in the uncultured marine bacteria, one cell at a timeProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- Targeted Access to the Genomes of Low-Abundance Organisms in Complex Microbial CommunitiesApplied and Environmental Microbiology, 2007
- The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition: Expanding the Universe of Protein FamiliesPLoS Biology, 2007
- Diversity and enzyme properties of protease-producing bacteria isolated from sub-Antarctic sediments of Isla de Los Estados, ArgentinaExtremophiles, 2007
- Microbial diversity in the deep sea and the underexplored “rare biosphere”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2006
- Development of metagenomic DNA shuffling for the construction of a xenobiotic geneGene, 2006
- Two isocitrate dehydrogenases from a psychrophilic bacterium, Colwellia psychrerythraeaExtremophiles, 2006