This is a special issue featuring several review articles in the area of metagenomics. The advancement of next-generation sequencing technology expedites metagenomics, which profiles the population of species in an environment. Prof. Jihyun Kim at Yonsei Univerisity invited three renowned metagenomics researchers to write review articles. In the first one, a group headed by Prof. Hana Yi at Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea surveys databases and analysis tools in metagenomics. The second review article by Prof. Seon-Woo Lee's team at Dong-A University, Busan, Korea focuses on soil-borne microorganisms with particular emphasis on their potential as sources of novel biological activities. The last review by Prof. Jin-Woo Bae and colleagues at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea discusses viral metagenomes in a variety of environmental samples. In addition, we feature four more articles that were winners of outstanding prizes for this year's KOGO Young Researchers Best Paper Award. Three of them deal with genome-wide association studies using Korea Association Resource (KARE) data. For example, Dr. Kyung-Won Hong at Korea National Institute of Health, Cheongwon, Korea reports risk variants associated with orthostatic hypotension and their functional implications. The last awardee is Ms. Yun-Jeong Kwon from Prof. Heui-Soo Kim' lab at Pusan National University, Busan, Korea. She reports the SINE-VNTR-Alu elements, a retrotransposon, in relation to associated functional genes.