PJB-2019-427
A Review on Metagenomic Approaches to Assess Microalgal Diversity: Options & Challenges
Huma Balouch
Abstract
Microalgae are large and diverse group of unicellular photosynthetic microorganisms that, being most abundant and efficient unicellular producer of a rich and complex biomass in all aquatic systems. Microalgae have gained global importance in recent years as potential source of renewable energy as well as bioindicators to manage an aquatic ecosystem. The accurate identification of diversity is a key challenge in microalgal ecology research. Moreover, the increased knowledge of the scope, structure, and dynamics of microalgal biodiversity is urgently needed. Morphological methods alone do not enable a reliable identification of Microalgae at lower taxonomic levels. Amplicon-based metagenome analysis using multiple primers approach can provide novel insight into the biological questions with a special focus on phylogenetics and taxonomy, to cast the widest possible taxonomic net for microalgae and yet reduce sequencing of non-microalgal eukaryotes. In this review, we highlight main advances in the last two decades in the field of metagenomics, present statistics of the main metagenomic techniques and databases, and discuss opportunities, challenges and perspectives in metagenomics with special reference to analyzing microalgal diversity in different ecosystems.
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