The Namib Desert is one of the world’s only truly coastal desert ecosystem. Until the end of the 1st decade of the twenty-first century, very little was known of the microbiology of this southwestern African desert, with the few reported studies being based solely on culture-dependent approaches. However, from 2010, an intense research program was undertaken by researchers from the University of the Western Cape Institute for Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics, and subsequently the University of Pretoria Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics, and their collaborators, led to a more detailed understanding of the ecology of the indigenous microbial communities in many Namib Desert biotopes. Namib Desert soils and the associated specialized niche communities are inhabited by a wide array of prokaryotic, lower eukaryotic and virus/phage taxa. These communities are highly heterogeneous on both small and large spatial scales, with community composition impacted by a range of macro- and micro-environmental factors, from water regime to soil particle size. Community functionality is also surprisingly non-homogeneous, with some taxa retaining functionality even under hyper-arid soil conditions, and with subtle changes in gene expression and phylotype abundances even on diel timescales. Despite the growing understanding of the structure and function of Namib Desert microbiomes, there remain enormous gaps in our knowledge. We have yet to quantify many of the processes in these soil communities, from regional nutrient cycling to community growth rates. Despite the progress that has been made, we still have little knowledge of either the role of phages in microbial community dynamics or inter-species interactions. Furthermore, the intense research efforts of the past decade have highlighted the immense scope for future microbiological research in this dynamic, enigmatic and charismatic region of Africa.

中文翻译：

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纳米布沙漠栖息地的微生物学。

纳米布沙漠是世界上唯一真正的沿海沙漠生态系统之一。直到二十一世纪第一十年末，人们对这种西南非洲沙漠的微生物学知之甚少，很少有报道的研究完全基于依赖文化的方法。但是，从2010年开始，西开普大学微生物生物技术和元基因组学研究所的研究人员以及随后的比勒陀利亚大学微生物生态与基因组学中心及其合作者进行了深入的研究，从而获得了更详细的理解。许多纳米布沙漠生物群落中土著微生物群落的生态学 纳米布沙漠土壤和相关的专业生态位社区居住着各种各样的原核生物，低等真核生物和病毒/噬菌体类群。这些群落在大小空间上都是高度异质的，群落组成受到从水体到土壤粒径的一系列宏观和微观环境因素的影响。社区功能也令人惊讶地是非均质的，即使在高干旱土壤条件下，某些分类单元仍保持功能，甚至在diel时间尺度上，基因表达和系统型丰度也有细微变化。尽管人们对纳米布沙漠微生物群的结构和功能的认识日益提高，但我们的知识仍然存在巨大差距。我们尚未对这些土壤群落中的许多过程进行量化，从区域养分循环到群落生长速率。尽管已经取得了进展，我们仍然不了解噬菌体在微生物群落动力学中的作用或种间相互作用。此外，过去十年的大量研究工作突显了非洲这个充满活力，神秘和魅力的地区未来微生物研究的巨大范围。