Branch of science that stands for the unification of experimental and computational advances in genomic sciences as well as a more ecological understanding of medical microbiology with respect to the functions of individual microbes and their influence on human biology depending on the context to other microbial members of the same community. While microbiology has traditionally relied on culture cultivation of the microbes in question, metagenomics omits this step and directly sequences DNA extracted from a given microbial community.