It isn't only animal studies that have benefited from the explosion in genomics tools. Next-generation DNA sequencing has transformed microbial ecology studies as well. The past decade has seen the growth of metagenom-ics, in which researchers sequence DNA from a soil sample, the gut, even a computer keyboard, to learn what bacteria live there. With the new technologies, "you can sequence at a level deep enough that you can understand what's going on in the community," says Rob Knight, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
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