there are significant challenges associated with qualitative and quantitative nucleic acid tests performed in diagnostic laboratories. the development of internationally available certified reference materials which can be traced to reference measurements will contribute to a better understanding of the performance characteristics of nucleic acid tests and enhance reliability and comparability ...

Christoph Steininger and colleagues explore how multiple infectious, autoimmune, metabolic, and neoplastic diseases have been associated with changes in the intestinal microbiome, although a cause-effect relationship is often difficult to establish. Integration of metagenomics into clinical medicine is a challenge, and the authors highlight clinical approaches that are of high priority for the ...

Termites play a key role in the global carbon cycle as decomposers. Their ability to thrive solely on dead plant matter is chiefly attributable to the activities of gut microbes, which comprise protists, bacteria, and archaea. Although the majority of the gut microbes are as yet unculturable, molecular analyses have gradually been revealing their diversity and symbiotic mechanisms. Culture-inde...

The application of metagenomics, the culture-independent capture and subsequent analysis of genomic DNA from the environment, has greatly expanded our knowledge of the diversity of microbes and microbial protein families; however, the metabolic functions of many microorganisms remain largely unknown. DNA stable-isotope probing (DNA-SIP) is a recently developed method in which the incorporation ...

GSTaxClassifier (Genomic Signature based Taxonomic Classifier) is a program for metagenomics analysis of shotgun DNA sequences. The program includes a simple but effective algorithm, a modification of the Bayesian method, to predict the most probable genomic origins of sequences at different taxonomical ranks, on the basis of genome databases;a function to generate genomic profiles of reference...