Microbial communities, which include bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses, play a fundamental role in various ecosystems, influencing processes such as nutrient cycling, disease dynamics, and environmental stability, and it is necessary to study them, as they have crucial applications in agriculture, medicine, and environmental science.
Traditional methods, such as microbial isolation and culture, have long been used to study these communities, though they often fail to capture the full diversity due to their reliance on culturable microorganisms. Advancements in technologies such as high-throughput sequencing, bioinformatics, metagenomics, the integration of machine learning techniques and the development of advanced statistical framework, have transformed how we analyze microbial communities, enabling researchers to explore their diversity, composition, and functional potential in unprecedented detail. However, there remain significant challenges in harmonizing methods, optimizing protocols, and interpreting data across diverse environments and research contexts.
As the field evolves, continued research into novel analytical methods will empower scientists to address pressing challenges, from antibiotic resistance to climate change mitigation, by leveraging the potential of microbial communities. with this in mind, BMC Methods is opening this collection on "Methods for the analysis of microbial communities." Topics of interest for this Collection include:
- High-throughput sequencing techniques for microbial community profiling
- Metagenomic, metatranscriptomic, and metaproteomic analyses
- Single-cell sequencing and its application in microbiome research
- Isolation and culturing protocols for microbial community analysis
- Novel sampling techniques for diverse habitats (soil, water, human microbiomes, etc.)
- Novel bioinformatics approaches for microbial community analysis
- Standardization of methodologies in microbial ecology
- Integrating machine learning with microbial data interpretation
- Functional analysis of microbial communities
- New methodologies for studying microbial interactions and networks
All manuscripts submitted to this journal, including those submitted to collections and special issues, are assessed in line with our editorial policies and the journal’s peer review process. Reviewers and editors are required to declare competing interests and can be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.
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