Metagenomics: New Trends and Solutions: 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Metagenomics, as a field of research, emerged quite recently, showing significant progress in the description of microbial communities inhabiting a great variety of environments. Initially based on 16S rRNA phylotyping, aimed at assessing the biodiversity of natural microbiomes at the species or genus level, it can now reveal pathogenic or biotechnologically relevant strains among harmless bacteria of the same species using alignment-free computational approaches. Genome-resolved metagenomics can identify genetic mobility and metabolic interactions within complex communities, and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) appeared as a new category of genomic data. By employing long-read sequencing, complete genomes of bacteriophages, not yet obtained in the form of biological objects, and the context of chromosomes of so far uncultured bacteria became available. Novel computational approaches allowed for real prospects in the reconstruction of ancient episodes of phage infections based on the order of prokaryotic CRISPR spacers, or, conversely, help to predict the spread of pathogenic microorganisms or mobile vectors that create risks of expansion of emerging or re-emerging diseases. The patterns of microbial consortia in the framework of historic development of life on Earth and, in particular, the human race, are also of high interest. A particularly intriguing emphasis in metagenomics is connected with mutual events of transcript-based signaling and regulation between particular microorganisms in complex communities, as well as between prokaryotes and their hosts.

The aim of this Special Issue is to present advanced new experimental and bioinformatics studies, highlighting the huge heuristic potential of metadata and proposing the means for improvement of their interpretation. Considering them as a resource of new genomic information, we also encourage the submission of papers formulating new ideas and hypotheses about what kind of hidden genomic information can be extracted from metagenomics data.

The scope of the Special Issue includes, but is not limited to:

• Biodiversity of microbiomes in different ecological niches;
• Intraspecies polymorphism in natural biotopes;
• Alignment-free approaches in metagenomics;
• New genome assembly from metagenome;
• Predictive approaches in metagenomics;
• Metagenome-based metabolomics;
• Metadata resources  

Dr. Olga Ozoline
Dr. Konstantin S. S. Shavkunov
Guest Editors

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