Metagenomics can improve strategies for monitoring the impact of pollutants on ecosystems and for cleaning up contaminated environments. Increased understanding of how microbial communities cope with pollutants will help assess the potential of contaminated sites to recover from pollution and increase the chances of bioaugmentation or biostimulation trials to succeed. Moreover, by providing direct access to the pool of environmental genomes without the bias of cultivation, metagenomics offers the possibility of exploring the vast diversity of degradation pathways of environmental microorganisms. This could lead to the design of more efficient customized strains/consortia for targeted use in bioremediation applications.
Further readingLabels: bioremediation