First global survey of soil genomics reveals a war between fungi and bacteria
August 1, 2018, European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Soil is full of life, essential for nutrient cycling and carbon storage. To better understand how it functions, an international research team led by EMBL and the University of Tartu (Estonia) conducted the first global study of bacteria and fungi in soil. Their results show that bacteria and fungi are in constant competition for nutrients and produce an arsenal of antibiotics to gain an advantage over one another. The study can also help predict the impact of climate change on soil, and help us make better use of natural soil components in agriculture. Nature publishes the results on 1 August 2018.
Research on the soil microbiome requires scientists to get their hands dirty. Over the course of five years, 58.000 soil samples were collected from 1450 sites all over the world (40 subsamples per site), that were carefully selected to be unaffected by human activities such as agriculture. First authors Mohamad Bahram (University of Tartu) and Falk Hildebrand (EMBL), together with a large team of collaborators, set up this massive project, gathered samples, and analysed the 14.2 terabyte dataset. Of the 1450 sites sampled, 189 were selected for in-depth analysis (see Figure 1), covering the world's most important biomes, from tropical forests to tundra, on all continents.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-survey-soil-genomics-reveals.html#jCp
