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Wednesday 12 September 2018

Historical review on Metagenomics by one of its pioneers

Norman Pace, one of the pioneers of metagenomics is offering us an historical review of his own contribution to the field,  here.

A few citations from the master:
Only in recent decades has the microbial world been recognized as a driver of global biology, deeply intertwined with the health and functions not only of ourselves but of the biosphere at large.

Despite this, he acknowledges that we still poorly undestand the microbial world, and conclude that
The Golden Age of microbiology is still ahead of us

Enjoy! 

Wednesday 27 June 2018

Nitrogen fixing Planctomycetes uncovered

In a TARA metagenomes reconstruction exercise,
Delmont et al., Nature Microbio 2018 report the discovery of nitrogen fixing in Planctomycetes. This is the first report of such diazotrophes in this exciting phylum.

In addition, they report that the proportion of genes of unknown function was 27.6% (±2.63%) for the proteobacterial HBDs and 49.3% (±0.5%) as compared to for the 27.6% (±2.63%) for the proteobacterial, highlight the fact that we still poorly understand the functioning of these bacteria.

Also, the set of nitrogen fixation genes were very divergent, suggesting that they were not the result of a lateral gene transfer from more classical diazotrphes.

Looking forward to more discovery in this field.