Summary

Metagenomics is the study of microbial communities directly in their natural environments, includingmouth, skin, and gut samples to understand human related diseases, soil samples to study plant soil-microbe interactions, and water samples. A sample can contain more than 10,000 species, but how quantify statistically?Concepts like microbiota, metagenome and microbiome are a bit confusing, microbiota refers to taxonomically identification the community of microorganisms; the metagenome conforms the genes and genomes of the microbiota, including plasmids, and highlights the genetic potential of the population; whereas the microbiome refers to the whole conjunct of genes and genomes of the microbiota, as well as the products of the microbiota and the host environment. This short book tries to put light on the Taxonomic Diversity and its measurement using metagenomics, about the statistical methods and the methodologies.