Discovery and Annotation of Novel Proteins from Rumen Gut Metagenomic Sequencing Data

Metagenomics is the practice of sequencing all genomes within an ecosystem, and has become the gold standard for the study of microbial population and structure in environmental samples.  However, to make the most of metagenomic data requires a suite of sophisticated bioinformatics software.  One particular focus of metagenomics has been the identification of novel enzymes and other proteins with functions relevant to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. As more technologies, datasets, software, and analytical systems are invented, easy access, analysis, evaluation and sharing of the data are required.  Here I review tools and pipelines for the discovery and annotation of novel proteins from metagenomics data, and the results of applying those pipelines to a number of rumen samples from Scotland