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Abstract The biosphere is dominated by microorganisms which play an important role in the substance cycle of the earth, yet about 99﹪of these microorganisms have not been or can not be cultured by traditional methods, thus impeding the detailed study on them. With the development of molecular biology and its application in microbiology, a new research field, namely environmental genomics, has been developed．Without prior isolation and cultivation of relative microorganisms from environmental samples, all the genetic materials are directly extracted and an environmental genomic library is constructed. The library is further analyzed with similar strategies for functional genomics, either to screen active metabolites and their coding genes, or to analyze sequences of relative phylogenic anchors to establish the organization, evolution of relative microorganisms and their respective roles in substance cycle in a specific ecosystem．On the other hand, with more information about the physiological and biochemical characteristics of uncultured microorganisms revealed by environmental genomics, appropriate culturing conditions might be developed and pure cultures of relative uncultured microorganisms could be finally obtained. The strategies for the construction and analysis of environmental libraries and recent progress in this field are reviewed. The application of environmental genomics in microbial ecology is also introduced.
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Received: 18 May 2006
Published: 25 September 2006
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