Breakthroughs in high-throughput genome sequencing and high-performance
computing technologies have empowered scientists to decode many genomes
including our own. Now they have a bigger ambition: to fully understand
the vast diversity of microbial communities within us and around us, and
to exploit their potential for the improvement of our health and
environment. In this new field called metagenomics, microbial genomes
are sequenced directly from the habitats without lab cultivation.
Computational metagenomics, however, faces both a data challenge that
deals with tens of tera-bases of sequences and an algorithmic one that
deals with the complexity of thousands of species and their
interactions.
This interdisciplinary book is essential reading for those who are
interested in beginning their own journey in computational metagenomics.
It is a prism to look through various intricate computational
metagenomics problems and unravel their three distinctive aspects:
metagenomics, data engineering, and algorithms. Graduate students and
advanced undergraduates from genomics science or computer science fields
will find that the concepts explained in this book can serve as stepping
stones for more advanced topics, while metagenomics practitioners and
researchers from similar disciplines may use it to broaden their
knowledge or identify new research targets.
