Microbial Diversity, Metagenomics, and Bioinformatics

Dear Colleagues,

Microorganisms are involved in almost all processes in the biosphere, ranging from maintenance of health of human beings to that of ecological sustainability on the Earth, and contribute to the transformation of key elements of life such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur in natural and environmentally modified ecosystems. Microorganisms keep close syntrophic relationships with humans and animals either as pathogens or probiotics, contribute to the fermentation processes and biotechnology industries, help to degrade organic contaminants and transform toxic metals, support plant growth and suppress plant diseases, and play a key role in the discovery of new pharmaceuticals and biofuels.

Through the application of next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics techniques with culture-independent approaches, microbial metagenomics could help us to investigate unbiased samples of all genes from diverse sampled communities and allow studying microbial diversity and functions directly in their natural environments. With the rapid advancement of high-throughput sequencing-based bioinformatics and metagenomics, exploration of novel diversity would greatly enhance our understanding of the genetic, metabolic, physiological, and other traits of microorganisms, thus facilitating the potential application and benefits in biomedical and biotechnological industries, environmental protection, agriculture, and other fields.

For this Special Issue of “Microbial Diversity, Metagenomics, and Bioinformatics”, we invite submissions that address microbial diversity and metagenomics in natural habitats and contamination-modified ecosystems, microbial interactions with animals and plants, biomedical and human pathogens, novel microbial biodegradation and synthesis pathways related with metagenomics studies, new microbial bioinformatics studies, and other related aspects mentioned above.

Dr. Ri-Qing Yu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.