Microbes are ubiquitous in the world in which we live. With the development of high throughput DNA sequencing technology, there has been an explosion of DNA sequence data on microbes. The major aim of future microbial genomics will be to identify the functional significances of individual gene and genomic fragments and to use the information to help improve human health and promote our society development. One current major undertaking to understand genomic information is the comparative analyses between genomes that are not only distantly related, but also closely related ones. Such comparative analyses between genomes that have diverged at different evolutionary time scales allow us to extract different types of information about biological functions and evolutionary processes (Xu, 2010).

References:
Xu, J. (2010) Microbial Population Genetics. Caister Academic Press, Norfolk, UK.

Labels: Comparative Microbial Genomics, DNA sequencing, DNA sequencing technology