Towards uncultured-microbe genomics

Metagenomics: application of genomics to uncultured microorganisms.

Metagenomics (also referred to as environmental and community genomics) is the genomic analysis of microorganisms by direct extraction and cloning of DNA from an assemblage of microorganisms. The development of metagenomics stemmed from the ineluctable evidence that as-yet-uncultured microorganisms represent the vast majority of organisms in most environments on earth. This evidence was derived...

The Microbe browser for comparative genomics

The Microbe browser is a web server providing comparative microbial genomics data. It offers comprehensive, integrated data from GenBank, RefSeq, UniProt, InterPro, Gene Ontology and the Orthologs Matrix Project (OMA) database, displayed along with gene predictions from five software packages. The Microbe browser is daily updated from the source databases and includes all completely sequenced b...

Artificial symbiosis: Towards a robot-microbe partnership

The development of the robot EcoBot II, which exhibits some partial form of energetic autonomy, is reported. Microbial Fuel Cells were used as the onboard self-sustaining power supply, which incorporated bacterial cultures from sewage sludge and employed oxygen from free air for oxidation in the cathode. This robot was able to perform phototaxis, temperature sensing and wireless transmission of...

Towards the definition of pathogenic microbe.

Identification and typing of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms have become major objectives over the past decade in microbiology. In food, strain typing is necessary to ensure food safety and for linking cases of foodborne infections to suspected items. Recent advances in molecular biology have resulted in the development of numerous DNA-based methods for discrimination among bacterial str...

RNAi Towards Functional Genomics Studies