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Marine metagenomics

The use of metagenomics (study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples) in the marine domain is increasing rapidly. Today marine metagenomics is used in a range of scientific and industry applications from monitoring pollution and recycling water systems to disease survalliance and development of functional feed for the aquaculture industry as shown in the figure below.

Metagenomics has the potential to provide unprecedented insight into the structure and function of heterogeneous communities of microorganisms and their vast biodiversity. However, in order to expand the potential further for the research community and biotech industry the metagenomics methodologies need to overcome a number of challenges related to standardization, development of relevant databases and bioinformatics tools. New and emerging sequencing technologies, integration and curation of metadata gives an extra burden to the development of future databases and tools.

About this website

The Marine Metagenomics Portal was developed as a part of the ELIXIR EXCELERATE project and made online in 2017. It is maintained by The Center for Bioinformatics (SfB) at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway. SfB is hosting the UiT node of ELIXIR Norway.