2nd International Symposium on Soil Metagenomics

Soil microbial communities affect the development and fertility of soils. Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies now open possibilities for analyzing these communities in regard to their composition (diversity) and function at depths not imaginable only a few years ago. The new speed and cost efficiency of these novel sequencing technologies now requires an effort for a corresponding response from soil microbial ecology. Vice versa, the requirements to characterize microbial communities and address ecologically relevant questions will instruct further bioinformatic efforts, e.g., for found statistical evaluations and visualizations of results.

This 2nd Thünen Symposium on Soil Metagenomics will connect bioinformatics to microbial ecology in order to enhance our capacity to tackle the most burning questions in soil ecology. What can we learn about the diversity, dynamics, vulnerability and ecological contributions of soil microbial communities and how can we utilize the new sequencing technologies in applied environmental sciences? Which novel possibilities do we have to understand the complex network within microbial communities, and interactions among its members and with the abiotic and biotic environments?

The Symposium will be flanked by a Workshop on Bioinformatic Tools in which developers demonstrate and share applications for analyzing nucleic acid information from soils.

More information: http://www.soil-metagenomics.org/

Micro B3 and SILVA will be represented by Frank Oliver Glöckner