Two-component systems in microbial communities: approaches and resources for generating and analyzing metagenomic data sets

Two-component signal transduction represents the main mechanism by which bacterial cells interact with their environment. The functional diversity of two-component systems and their relative importance in the different taxonomic groups and ecotypes of bacteria has become evident with the availability of several hundred genomic sequences. The vast majority of bacteria, including many high rank taxonomic units, while being components of complex microbial communities remain uncultured (i.e., have not been isolated or grown in the laboratory). Environmental genomic data from such communities are becoming available, and in addition to its profound impact on microbial ecology it will propel molecular biological disciplines beyond the traditional model organisms. This chapter describes the general approaches used in generating environmental genomic data and how that data can be used to advance the study of two component-systems and signal transduction in general.