Assessment of the functional diversity of soil microbial communities in the German Biodiversity Exploratories by metagenomics

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The microbial diversity in soils exceeds that of other environments and analyzing the diversity of soil microbial communities is still a great challenge. The project is part of an initiative that aims to explore the diversity of soil microorganisms with respect to vegetation type and land use intensity and relate it to ecological gradients at different scales by employing metagenomic technologies. The research is carried out at grassland and forest sampling sites within the framework of the three German Biodiversity Exploratories. An approach will be developed and exemplarily applied that copes with the enormous microbial diversity of soil. The approach is based on identifying and selecting (filtering) targets such as groups of organisms or genes encoding key microbial functions (here cellulolytic and lipolytic enzymes) before analyzing their distribution at different spatiotemporal scales in relation to vegetation type and use intensity. This strategy relies on three steps: (i) Construction of complex metagenomic libraries from microbial DNA extracted from soil samples covering different vegetation types and use intensities. (ii) Comparative screening of the libraries for exemplary groups of organisms and functions and metabolic profiling via snapshot sequencing are performed to identify (filter) targets that display differences and present distinct profiles between the sampling plots. (iii) Construction and use of microarrays and primers for monitoring the filtered targets in the Exploratories in relation to vegetation type, use intensity, and spatiotemporal variation.