Research report 2008 - Max Planck Institute for Informatics
Informatics for meta genome research: insights into the world of non-culturable microorganisms
Authors
McHardy, Alice Carolyn; Patil, Kaustubh
Departments
Computational Genomics and Epidemiology
MPI für Informatik, Saarbrücken
Summary
Genomic sequencing of microbial communities allows to study the genomes and functional capabilities of uncultivable organisms. At the Max Planck Institute for Informatics methods are developed to assign the obtained genomic sequence fragments to the respective organisms. Application to metagenomes of microbial communities with industrially relevant capabilities, such as the degradation of plant materials to metabolites convertible to biofuels, reveals which organisms have a leading role in these processes.