d the National Institutes of Health, which in 2008 launched the 5-year, $150 million Human Microbiome Project (HMP) from the NIH Common Fund. That project's goals are to catalog the microbes that inhabit the human body, identify their role in health and disease, and create tools -- such as reference data sets, a data resource center, and improved computational technologies -- that can be used to study the human microbiome. HMP is a one-time pot of money, and most of the grants have already been allocated, but NIH hopes the project will spur applications for institute-specific projects, says Maria Giovanni, assistant director for microbial genomics and advanced technologies in the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases's Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. "If that didn't happen," she says, "it would be like having a party and nobody comes."
Many disciplines, few boundaries
"Metagenomics crosses an exceptional number of disciplinary boundaries -- which after all are not respected or recognized by nature but are human inventions," says University of California, San Diego (UCSD), biochemist and Associate Vice Chancellor of Research John Wooley. Metagenomics training similarly crosses boundaries: Researchers are trained in microbiology, systems biology, ecology, genomics, plant biology, marine biology, soil science, bioinformatics, bioengineering, chemical engineering, biogeochemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, computer science, statistics, and clinical sciences including medical microbiology, gastroenterology, dermatology, and oral science.
The balance of skills needed varies from project to project. Wooley says some current UCSD studies combine bioinformatics, microbiology, ecology, and genomics. Others add structural biology, biophysics, and deep statistical analyses; or marine biology and physical oceanography; or pharmacology and pharmacogenomics. The skills and knowledge needed for doing metagenomics research are so broad, he says, that disciplinary divisions “are not going to be first on any researcher's mind." What will be first, he says, "is getting the right tool set together to answer the question at hand."
Assembling the tool set
No university offers a graduate training program in metagenomics per se; instead, just as molecular biology has been incorporated into many disciplines, metagenomics is also being added to a wide range of fields. Those seeking training in metagenomics should search for an ideal research adviser -- in whatever field they're most interested in -- working in an excellent environment. The best training programs have several faculty members who are involved in metagenomics research, in different disciplines.
Metagenomics research requires deep disciplinary training in microbiology -- with particular focus on molecular biology, systems biology, and genomics -- and expertise in bioinformatics and statistics. Computer skills are likely to be especially marketable as sequencing technologies advance. The third generation of sequencers, expected soon, will increase the rate of data collection, putting computing even further behind than it already is, predicts microbiologist Julian Marchesi of Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. "It is definitely a barrier, and if I were looking to employ someone, it would be an advantage if they were able to write code for a computer to aid in processing the DNA data being processed."
Although keeping abreast of rapidly evolving sequencing technology is critical to doing metagenomic research, it's even more important to be able to ask rigorous questions; in other words, you need a strong disciplinary grounding. Ravel says, "I tell my grad students that you have to be a good bench scientist first, and if you can combine the bioinformatics and the biology, your chance of getting a job is already twice as much."
The job market
Compared with other academic life-science fields, the metagenomics job market already looks strong, but it's impossible to quantify -- and too soon to know what the future holds, says Matthew Kane, director of