Building on basic metagenomics with complementary technologies

Metagenomics, the application of random shotgun sequencing to environmental samples, is a powerful approach for characterizing microbial communities. However, this method only represents the cornerstone of what can be achieved using a range of complementary technologies such as transcriptomics, proteomics, cell sorting and microfluidics. Together, these approaches hold great promise for the study of microbial ecology and evolution.