New generation DNA sequencing (NGS): Mining for genes and the potential of extremophiles

Abstract

NGS technologies have provided unprecedented access to the gene pool of all living beings, in particular the large number and diversity of microorganism inhabitants of any given environment, and these methods allow to do it in a culture-independent manner. Using these technologies, a variety of questions can now be approached to solve the unknowns related to the analysis of nucleic acids and cell functioning such as whole-genome sequencing, target-specific re-sequencing, discovery of transcription factor-binding sites, noncoding RNA expression profiling, whole-genome expression analyses, gene evolution and mobility, and phylogeny and phylogenomics, among many other strategies to study the working of cells and the involved mechanisms. Specifically, how cells live under extreme conditions can provide with increasingly important information on the evolutionary mechanisms of living forms as well as the resistance of biomolecules to extreme conditions and the functioning of extreme microorganisms and their biomolecules. This chapter discusses a number of disclosed extremophilic microorganisms and highlights the potential of some of their genes as an example of the application of NGS to explore the biological features of those microbes living under the extreme conditions. NGS technologies allow high-throughput processing of DNA and RNA sequences which enhanced our understanding of the enormous amount of information encoded in these molecules and accelerated magnitude for an acquisition of sequencing data. NGS has greatly revolutionized the potential to investigate cell structure and functioning through the study of genomics and the molecular biology of extremophilic microorganisms and their genes.