De novo sequencing is particularly useful for detecting unsequenced microbial community members, isoforms, and mutations, all of which are often missed by traditional databasedependent approaches. As microbial diversity is often poorly represented in current databases, partly due to the difficulty of culturing many microbes, de novo sequencing enables a more complete analysis of microbial communities, even in novel or underexplored environments. By identifying sequence variants and novel peptides, it can therefore provide deeper insights into microbial diversity, and into their (unique) contributions to functional roles in the community.