All the information about a microbe, or any kind of cell, exists in the cell's DNA. DNA is the molecule that contains the genetic code of organisms and, thus, can be described as the "blueprint" of the cell, since it tells the cell what to do and when to do it. In can further be divided in small subsections called genes. There are thousands of genes in the DNA of an organism and each gene has a specific function. For example, the human DNA contains about 25,000–35,000 genes, but only a very few genes are responsible for the color of your eyes. The NGS technology allows scientists to "read" the DNA from a whole microbial community without the need for pure cultures of the microbes. This approach is called "Metagenome sequencing" and it provides the scientist with a list of the genes of all the microbes living in a particular area.

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