ABSTRACT
The majority of soil Metagenomics techniques require a considerable level of specialised knowledge, however, a number are being developed to provide solutions targeted at the monitoring market. The genome describes the full set of genetic “instructions” retained by an individual organism. Alongside the sequences that encode the building blocks of our cells “proteins” there are also instructions that control the expression of each gene in response to environmental change as well as significant stretches of redundant information. As an answer to this problem, it has been suggested that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based 'molecular barcoding' techniques could be used. To overcome the problems of PCR for gene quantification, techniques have been developed that take a snap shot of product levels during reaction. In parallel with approaches in proteomics, many metabolomic techniques utilize methods that focus analysis within a discreet class of metabolites, many researchers exploit a selective extraction procedure followed by gas or high pressure chromatography coupled to mass spectral analysis.
