Source: Janet Jansson and Dan Hawkes
Over the last few years, ESD’s Janet Jansson has devoted much of her
scientific attention to the use of “omics”—producing a wealth of data
that provides information on the composition of DNA (genomics), RNA
(transcriptomics), proteins (proteomics), and metabolites (metabolomics)
for multiple organisms in a given habitat, such as soil or the human
gut. In the most recent (Feb. 2013) volume of Nature, Jansson has
written an editorial (entitled “Exploring Earth’s Dark Matter”) that
addresses the following question: Can omics “provide insight into
microbial ecology that cannot be achieved using traditional methods?” In
other words, can use of these modern “big data” technologies be as
revealing as (or more revealing than) more targeted conventional
experiments to study microbe–environment associations? This question is
particularly relevant to soil, an especially challenging habitat
because of its high microbial diversity.
Jansson also observes that “the discovery of a microbial species with
potentially novel functions would be just as interesting as the
discovery of a star.”
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