Bioinformatic techniques on marine genomics

Abstract

Marine biotechnology is the industrial, medical or environmental application of biological resources from the sea. Since the marine environment is the most biologically and chemically diverse habitat on the planet, marine biotechnology has in recent years delivered a growing number of major therapeutic products, industrial and environmental applications, and analytical tools. These range from the use of a snail toxin to develop a pain control drug to metabolites from a sea squirt to develop anticancer therapeutic and marine enzymes to remove bacterial biofilms. In addition, well-known and broadly used analytical techniques are derived from marine molecules or enzymes, including green fluorescence protein gene tagging methods and heat resistant polymerases used in the polymerase chain reaction. Advances in bacterial identification, metabolic profiling, and physical handling of cells are being revolutionized by techniques such as mass spectrometric analysis of bacterial proteins. Advances in instrumentation and a combination of these physical advances with progress in proteomics and bioinformatics are accelerating our ability to harness biology for commercial gain. Single cell Raman spectroscopy and microfluidics are two emerging techniques that we try to touch a bit in this chapter. In this chapter, we provide a brief survey and update of the most powerful and rapidly growing analytical techniques as used in marine biotechnology, together with some promising examples of less well-known earlier stage methods which may make a bigger impact in the future.