Soil microorganisms are clearly a key component of both natural and managed ecosystems. Despite the challenges of surviving in soil, a gram of soil can contain thousands of individual microbial taxa, including viruses and members of all three domains of life. Recent advances in marker gene, genomic and metagenomic analyses have greatly expanded our ability to characterize the soil microbiome and identify the factors that shape soil microbial communities across space and time. However, although most soil microorganisms remain undescribed, we can begin to categorize soil microorganisms on the basis of their ecological strategies. This is an approach that should prove fruitful for leveraging genomic information to predict the functional attributes of individual taxa. The field is now poised to identify how we can manipulate and manage the soil microbiome to increase soil fertility, improve crop production and improve our understanding of how terrestrial ecosystems will respond to environmental change.

中文翻译：

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拥抱未知：解开土壤微生物组的复杂性

土壤微生物显然是自然生态系统和受管理生态系统的关键组成部分。尽管在土壤中生存存在挑战，但一克土壤仍可以包含成千上万的微生物分类群，包括病毒和生命的所有三个领域的成员。标记基因，基因组和宏基因组学分析的最新进展极大地扩展了我们表征土壤微生物组并鉴定跨时空塑造土壤微生物群落的因素的能力。但是，尽管大多数土壤微生物仍未描述，但我们可以根据其生态策略开始对土壤微生物进行分类。对于利用基因组信息预测单个分类单元的功能属性，这种方法应该会卓有成效。