ABSTRACT
Different industries have different motivations to probe the enormous resource that is uncultivated microbial diversity. Currently, there is a global political drive to promote white (industrial) biotechnology as a central feature of the sustainable economic future of modern industrialized societies. Metagenomics promises to provide new molecules with diverse functions, but ultimately, expression systems are required for any new enzymes and bioactive molecules to become an economic success. This chapter highlights industrial efforts and achievements in metagenomics. “Metagenomics has the potential to access large numbers of previously inaccessible natural antibiotics,” say the researchers. One area of novel drug discovery which has been made possible by metagenomics is the investigation of symbiotic bacteria, one of the major natural sources of therapeutic products and one which has so far resisted analysis by pure culture techniques. Application of modern screening technology to biodiversity is clearly a rewarding approach in the development of “white biotechnology field”.
