Marine metagenome and supporting technology

Bacteria are known to be highly diverse and unique to the various environments they reside in. Covering more than 70% of the earth’s surface, marine bacterial ecosystems in particular have long been regarded as reservoirs for novel and unique genes important to industry and pharmaceutics. In the first part of the chapter, we reviewed the importance and potential of bacteria from marine environments as an important genetic resource and some of the recent efforts in the implementation of marine metagenomic research to screen for genes applicable in bioprocesses, bioremediation and bioethanol production. Nevertheless, metagenomic research has also provided new challenges that will need to be addressed in order to use these resources efficiently. Here, in the second part of the chapter, we introduced several supporting technologies that show great potential in assisting metagenomic research to overcome such challenges including high-throughput screening using microfluidics, single-cell analysis and in sil-ico data mining of metagenomic data. The introduction of such technologies, with metagenomic research, does not only allowed us to exploit these genetic resources to the fullest but may also provide new perspectives and insights towards living organisms and natural ecosystems.