MetXtra - An Integrated High-Throughput Metagenomics Platform for Enzyme Discovery

Only a tiny fraction (~1%) of all microorganisms can currently be grown in the laboratory and hence have their

DNA sequenced. Thus, there is a huge wealth of genetic sequence data still to be discovered from

environmental samples of the remaining 99% of uncultured microorganisms. The field of metagenomics

directly samples microorganisms living in the environment, thereby avoiding the need for laboratory culturing

before DNA sequencing. Metagenomics projects can yield very large amounts of DNA sequence data and the

major bottleneck to exploiting this data for enzyme discovery is the actual data analysis. The objective of this

project between Biocatalysts Ltd and EMBL-EBI is to develop a novel and unique data analysis software

platform, MetXtra, for the rapid and efficient identification of completely novel enzymes for Industrial

Biotechnology (IB) applications from large metagenomic DNA sequence libraries.