Metatranscriptomics is a useful probe into the members of an ecological community, capturing community members and their potential functions in a single sequencing effort. Because transcribed RNA is sequenced, via thorough processing of metatrancriptomes, we can decipher both the members constituting a community as well as the genes that each member was expressing at the instant that the sample was collected. Metatranscriptomics is a relatively immature pursuit as compared to genomics or transcriptomics.