Education

Education and outreach are key components of the CAMERA project. The metagenomics field is relatively new and is rapidly developing.

Marine metagenomics is emerging as a focus for innovation at the interface of marine environmental science and information technology. The pace of development and the power of gene sequencing for biological discovery are increasing rapidly with the application of shotgun sequencing technology to entire microbial communities. Unlike the traditional culture-based sequencing methods, metagenomics arises from a breakthrough sequencing approach to examine the interaction of countless microbial species present at a specific environmental location and offers tremendous potential to understand better the functioning of natural ecosystems. It is enabling scientists to consider each gene in the context of its ecology: the composition of the rest of the community, the environmental conditions in which it is found, and its relationships with other species with which it is found at other times and places.