With the first volume of a planned encyclopedia of genomes of all the planet’s microbes, UC Davis’ Jonathan Eisen and his American and German colleagues hope to begin to change how microbes are studied.With a sampling of the diversity with 56 genomes in today’s edition of the journal Nature, they argue for research that’s less narrowly focused on human disease-causing bacteria or agricultural and industrial uses and that instead seeks to fill in the bigger picture.Seeking out microbes that are evolutionarily novel is the best way to find something functional or that will have other values of interest, said Eisen of the UCD Genome Center and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, who is the study’s senior author.“There’s benefit to going out and sampling and not thinking you know what to sample,” he said.
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