unctional potential (such as shotgun metagenomic sequencing)</li>
<li>functional activity (such as metatranscriptome sequencing)</li>
</ul>
<p>Other “omics” technologies are now playing an increasing role in microbiome research, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>mass-spectrometry-based metabolomics, which provides profiles of small molecule metabolites in an environment.</li>
<li>metaproteomics which provides more detailed descriptions of functional activities of microbes (and their hosts, if applicable).</li>
</ul