Metagenomics: a call for bringing a new science into the classroom (while it's still new).

The pace of research and the development of new areas of focus in biology are increasing at breathtaking speed. Unfortunately, exciting new areas of science typically do not appear in science classrooms and textbooks until many years after their inception. This pattern leaves undergraduate, and especially high school, biology education lagging behind scientific advances. The result is that too many students are never afforded opportunities to learn about the cutting-edge discoveries that make biology so exciting to professional scientists. For example, under the radar of public attention, or even that of most biologists, microbiology is undergoing a renaissance. New ways of thinking about microbes and new technologies for studying them are turning one of the oldest branches of biology into an area of unexpected discoveries. A National Research Council (NRC) committee has recently concluded in its report, The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet (NRC, 2007a), that the emerging field of metagenomics may well revolutionize research in microbiology; moreover, the new paradigm on which metagenomics is based has the potential to transform how research and theory in many other areas of biology are configured (e.g., Dunning Hotopp et al., 2007; Figure 1). Metagenomics will also lead to a plethora of practical applications, from new medical approaches to alternative sources of energy, as scientists from many disciplines learn to harness the power of microbial communities. The birth of this exciting new field (described more fully below) provides the life sciences research and education communities with a powerful and rare opportunity. Metagenomics is so young, and the microbial world it seeks to characterize is so vast, that there is a real possibility that scientists, teachers, and students in many areas of science can work together to advance this field. By acting now to incorporate metagenomics into biology education and to utilize biology education to inform questions and future research paths for metagenomics, the life sciences community can begin to shift from the current situation, in which scientific advances take decades to reach the classroom, toward a system in which education and research are deliberately and strategically integrated with each other from the very beginning. This article outlines why the new science of metagenomics is so well suited to serve as a model for such an approach to keeping biology education current. It also serves as a call to the life sciences community to help the NRC and its Board on Life Sciences to think about issues, opportunities, and challenges that could be incorporated into some combination of formal studies and convening activities to facilitate the integration of research and education in metagenomics. To further develop the framework for this proposal, we invite interested readers to post responses to the questions that are posed in the final section of this article by clicking on the Reader Comments link.