1985: Norman R. Pace got the idea to clone DNA directly from environmental samples when him and his colleagues used PCR to explore the diversity of ribosomal RNA sequences

1991: Pace published the first report of isolating and cloning DNA from an environmental sample

1995: Edward DeLong continued Pace’s study by constructing a library of marine samples for metagenomic research

2002: Mya Breitbart and Forest Rohwer used environmental samples to discover over 50000 viruses in seawater

2003: Craig Venter collected metagenomic samples all over the world through Global Ocean Sampling Expedition

2004: Gene Tyson, Jill Banfield, and other colleagues from the UC Berkeley sequenced DNA from a acid mine drainage system, resulted complete culturing of the bacteria

2005: Stephan C. Chuster at published the first sequences of an enviromental sample generated through massive pyrosequencing