Metatranscriptomics

Metatranscriptomics is the set of techniques used to study gene expression of microbes within natural environments, i.e., the metatranscriptome.^[1]

While metagenomics focuses on studying the genomic content and on identifying which microbes are present within a community, metatranscriptomics can be used to study the diversity of the active genes within such community, to quantify their expression levels and to monitor how these levels change in different conditions (e.g., physiological vs. pathological conditions in an organism). The advantage of metatranscriptomics is that it can provide information about differences in the active functions of microbial communities that would otherwise appear to have similar make-up.^[2]