Metagenomics, or shotgun sequencing of environmental DNA, is used to study complex microbial communities. Kalyuzhnaya et al. describe a method for targeting specific microbial subpopulations in environmental samples and use it to analyze microbes that metabolize C₁ compounds.

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Backbone fragments of the Agrobacterium tumefaciens tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmid that bears transgenes of interest are occasionally transferred to plant genomes. Ülker et al. now show that Agrobacterium chromosomal DNA can also be integrated into transgenic plants at a low frequency.

Metabolic network modeling in multicellular organisms is confounded by the existence of multiple tissues with distinct metabolic functions. By integrating a genome-scale metabolic network with tissue-specific gene and protein expression data, Shlomi et al. adapt constraint-based approaches used in microorganisms to predict metabolism in ten human tissues. This computational approach should facilitate interpretation of expression data in the context of metabolic disorders.