ABSTRACT
Metagenomics is one of the fastest advancing fields in biology. The synergism with the new emerging “omics” approaches is showing the path to functional metagenomics and to adopting integrative, wider viewpoints like systems biology. Microorganisms are the most important employees for the production of fine chemicals, food ingredients and pharmaceuticals. A bio-based economy that uses renewable raw materials to produce energy and products, offers sustainable solutions, to reduce the production of greenhouse gases, to improve the quality of air and water and to provide food for all people. The genetic diversity of the microbial world is even more than expected. Metagenomics of the ocean begins to reveal the treasures of the microbial world. While the databank of sequences known to man, including those from the human genome, contained more than 180,000 genes, sequencing genomic information in 1,500 litres of Sargasso seawater revealed two million new ones.
