Emerging trends in genomic approaches for microbial bioprospecting

Abstract

Microorganisms constitute two out of the three domains of life on earth. They exhibit vast biodiversity and metabolic versatility. This enables the microorganisms to inhabit and thrive in even the most extreme environmental conditions, making them all pervading. The magnitude of biodiversity observed among microorganisms substantially supersedes that exhibited by the eukaryotes. These characteristics make the microbial world a very lucrative and inexhaustible resource for prospecting novel bioactive molecules. Despite their vast potential, over 99% of the microbial world still remains to be explored. The primary reason for this is that the culture-dependent methods used in the laboratories are grossly insufficient, as they support the growth of under 1% of the microorganisms found in nature. This limitation necessitated the development of techniques to circumvent culture dependency and gain access to the outstanding majority of the microorganisms. The development of culture-independent techniques has essentially reshaped the study of microbial diversity and community dynamics. Application of genomic and metagenomic approaches is contributing substantially towards characterization of the real microbial diversity. The amenability of these techniques to high throughput has opened the doors to explore the vast number of "uncultivable" microbial forms in substantially lesser time. The present article provides an update on the recent technological advances and emerging trends in exploring microbial community.