Publisher's Synopsis
Microbes are one of the ubiquitous entities inhabiting various niches and ecologies surrounding us.The emergence of field of 'microbiology' in the 19th century followed by many technological advancements in this field have helped in understanding several aspects of microbes, especially their role in various human diseases.The ability to isolate bacteria in pure culture(Blevins and Bronze,2010) has helped in identifying involvement of certain pathogens to specific diseases.Culturable' microbial species can be detected by plating and growing them on selective media, followed by morphological characterization of specific markers based on metabolic production/consumption.However, it was realized that not all microbes residing in an environment could be cultured in a laboratory.With the advent of cheaper next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and emergence of the field of metagenomics, researchers can now sequence genetic material of all microbes directly from environmental samples and can analyze the same to estimate microbial diversity using computational techniques.This has enabled several large scale metagenomic experiments, ranging from global oceans to multi- geographic human populations(Proctor.,2019, Falony.,2016;Turnbaugh.,2007, Rusch,2007).These developments have subsequently helped in profiling the entire microbial groups in different environments, thereby enabling researchers to understand the microbial community structure and dynamics therein
