title: Discovery of new protein families and functions: new challenges in functional metagenomics for biotechnologies and microbial ecology.
abstract: The rapid expansion of new sequencing technologies has enabled large-scale functional exploration of numerous microbial ecosystems, by establishing catalogs of functional genes and by comparing their prevalence in various microbiota. However, sequence similarity does not necessarily reflect functional conservation, since just a few modifications in a gene sequence can have a strong impact on the activity and the specificity of the corresponding enzyme or the recognition for a sensor. Similarly, some microorganisms harbor certain identified functions yet do not have the expected related genes in their genome. Finally, there are simply too many protein families whose function is not yet known, even though they are highly abundant in certain ecosystems. In this context, the discovery of new protein functions, using either sequence-based or activity-based approaches, is of crucial importance for the discovery of new enzymes and for improving the quality of annotation in public databases. This paper lists and explores the latest advances in this field, along with the challenges to be addressed, particularly where microfluidic technologies are concerned.
authors.affiliation: Université de Toulouse, Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA), Université Paul Sabatier (UPS), Institut National Polytechnique (INP), Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés (LISBP) , Toulouse, France ; INRA - UMR792 Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés , Toulouse, France ; CNRS, UMR5504 , Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ufarté
authors.affiliation: Université de Toulouse, Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA), Université Paul Sabatier (UPS), Institut National Polytechnique (INP), Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés (LISBP) , Toulouse, France ; INRA - UMR792 Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés , Toulouse, France ; CNRS, UMR5504 , Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: Gabrielle
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Potocki-Veronese
authors.affiliation: Université de Toulouse, Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA), Université Paul Sabatier (UPS), Institut National Polytechnique (INP), Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés (LISBP) , Toulouse, France ; INRA - UMR792 Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés , Toulouse, France ; CNRS, UMR5504 , Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: Élisabeth
authors.initials: É
authors.lastname: Laville
keywords: biotechnologies; discovery of new functions; high throughput screening; metagenomics; microbial ecology; microbial ecosystems; proteins