Functional genes as a predictor of soil functions

Description

Soil is a very diverse system that comprises microorganisms and their interactions giving numerous functional capabilities. Soil microorganisms carry out key ecosystem functions, including support of plant growth, cycling of carbon and other nutrients. Different agricultural practices and climate change influence the microbial communities, their interactions, functioning and lastly, a
number of ecosystem services. To better understand microbial functions and the relation to community composition, we need to study how different factors affect them and how they contribute to ecosystem functioning. When accounting the complexity of the soil natural microbial communities, previously it has not been feasible to study functions by soil microorganisms at a high resolution, due to lack of methods. We suggest that analysis of functional genes is a good predictor of soil functions and a potential key to understand the functional diversity. Thus, advances in metagenomics, such as high-throughput sequencing coupled with recently developed technique “sequence capture”, allow us to study genes of interest i.e. functional genes. Determination and abundance of genes encoding for extracellular enzymes can unravel functional diversity of key microbial players in carbon cycling under different climatic conditions. Moreover, the frequency of expressed genes towards the total presence of genes involved in decomposition of organic material, enables us to determine the links between functional and genetic diversity. Finally, analysing functional genes increase our knowledge of how climate change and different land-use practices affect functional potential of soil microorganisms and how this is related to ecosystem processes.

Period	2019 Aug 28
Event title	Wageningen Soil Conference 2019
Event type	Conference
Location	Wageningen, NetherlandsShow on map