Unraveling microbial complexities via metagenomic approach: Expanding cross-talk for environment management and prospecting

Abstract The advent of metagenomics, understanding the microbial in community level has revolutionized the field of microbial biotechnology due to its widespread application including the identification of novel microbes for the wastewater remediation. Metagenomics allows the recovery of genetic material directly from environmental niches and is widely employed as a powerful tool to identify enzymes with novel biocatalytic activities from the uncultivable microbial communities. This modern approach reveals much untold cross-talking and provides new perspectives for environmental management. Advancement of the next generation sequencing and bioinformatics tools not only supplies the knowledge of microbial metabolism but also provides information on genes involved in coding enzymes and valuable pathways of novel microorganisms, which play an important role in the biogeochemical cycles and degradation and detoxification of environmental pollutants. The process exploring pollution sites, construction, and screening of complex metagenomic DNA libraries followed by its application to isolate new enzymes and drugs of industrial importance. The review focused on this indispensable approach and tools used for screening strategies that allow efficient screening of large collections of microbes useful for the microbial prospecting and metabolic engineering.