Bioinformatics resources for microbial research in biological systems

Abstract

Bioinformatics is a continuously evolving field since it came into existence and contributing significantly in all major areas of biological sciences. Advanced sequencing technologies and exponential growth in computational resources have facilitated the high-end bioinformatics application in various research areas such as microbiome research in biological system. Bioinformatics contributed significantly in the development of powerful methods and tools in metagenomics research through direct inspection of targeted and nontargeted DNA in environmental samples. Advances in metagenomics, high-throughput methods, tools, software, pipelines, databases and analysis products for the microbes and microbiome-related studies have shifted the field of microbiology from culturing and microscopy studies to DNA sequencing and bioinformatics analyses. In the last decade, various long-term research projects and studies have flooded the microbiome sequencing data and analyses. Now, microbial community is realized that the next decade of microbial research will need data management, sharing, mining and networking skills to enhance knowledge discovery and regulation of microbial communities in ecosystem. Here, we are describing the microbiome researches in different biological domains, microbial databases and tools, which can be useful for application of microbes in emerging applied fields.