Microbial Metagenomics: From Basic Science to Biotechnological Applications
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Microbiology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 261
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Metagenomics has irrevocably reshaped microbial ecology by enabling direct access to uncultured microbial consortia and their metabolic networks. Since its emergence in the late 1990s, the field has evolved from 16S rRNA gene surveys to multi-omics integration, revealing microbial "dark matter" that constitutes ~99% of environmental biodiversity. This Special Issue seeks to bridge foundational discoveries—such as pan-genome dynamics and lateral gene transfer—with translational innovations in biotechnology. This Special Issue of IJMS invites original research and critical reviews that elucidate microbial community functions and harness metagenomic data for industrial and environmental solutions.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Mining of extremophile microbiomes for robust enzymes (e.g., lignocellulolytic hydrolases, thermostable polymerases).
- Metabolic pathway reconstruction for biofuel/biochemical production.
- Bioprospecting of uncultured microbes for biocatalysts in circular economy frameworks.
- Metagenome-resolved bioremediation strategies for xenobiotics, heavy metals, or plastic degradation.
- Carbon/nitrogen cycle modulation via engineered microbial consortia.
- Ecological resilience assessment in anthropogenic-impacted ecosystems using shotgun metagenomics.
- Single-cell metagenomics, long-read sequencing, and AI-driven annotation tools.
- Integrative meta-transcriptomics and metabolomics for functional validation.
This Special Issue is led by Dr. Rojas-Herrera and assisted by Dr. Germán Serrano from Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.
Dr. Rafael Antonio Rojas-Herrera
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- metagenomic
- microbial ecology
- bioremediation
- ecological resilience
- extremozyme bioprospecting
- biodiversity
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