The consequences of microbial functional diversity loss on key ecosystem processes remain
debatable due to lack of firm evidence from observational or manipulative experiments for a …

Our understanding of microbial ecology has been significantly furthered in recent years by
advances in sequencing techniques, but comprehensive surveys of the phenotypic …

Microorganisms exist throughout the soil profile and those microorganisms living in sub-
surface horizons likely play key roles in nutrient cycling and soil formation. However, the …

Extracellular DNA from dead microorganisms can persist in soil for weeks to years 1–3.
Although it is implicitly assumed that the microbial DNA recovered from soil predominantly …

Soils harbor enormously diverse bacterial populations, and soil bacterial communities can
vary greatly in composition across space. However, our understanding of the specific …

Bacteria belong to the key players in the carbon cycling in forest soils and thus affect the
global C balance. Our understanding of bacterial contribution to ecosystem processes relies …

The relationship between total and metabolically active soil microbial communities can
change drastically with environment. In dry lands, water availability is a key factor limiting …

Direct extraction and characterization of microbial community DNA through PCR amplicon
surveys and metagenomics has revolutionized the study of environmental microbiology and …

Soils sustain an immense diversity of microbes, which, to a large extent, remains
unexplored. A range of novel methods, most of which are based on rRNA and rDNA …

Over the last decade, important advances in molecular biology led to the development of
culture-independent approaches to describing bacterial communities. These new strategies …