Soil biota contribute to diverse soil ecosystem services such as greenhouse gas mitigation, carbon sequestration, pollutant degradation, plant disease suppression and nutrient acquisition for plant growth. Here, we provide detailed insight into different perturbation approaches to disentangle soil microbiome functions and to reveal the underlying mechanisms. By applying perturbation, one can generate compositional and functional shifts of complex microbial communities in a controlled way. Perturbations can reduce microbial diversity, diminish the abundance of specific microbial taxa and thereby disturb the interactions within the microbial consortia and with their eukaryotic hosts. Four different microbiome perturbation approaches, namely selective heat, specific biocides, dilution-to-extinction and genome editing are the focus of this mini-review. We also discuss the potential of perturbation approaches to reveal the tipping point at which specific soil functions are lost and to link this change to key microbial taxa involved in specific microbiome-associated phenotypes.

中文翻译：

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通过扰动解开土壤微生物组的功能

土壤生物群有助于多样化的土壤生态系统服务，例如温室气体减排、碳固存、污染物降解、植物病害抑制和植物生长养分获取。在这里，我们提供了对不同扰动方法的详细见解，以解开土壤微生物组的功能并揭示其潜在机制。通过应用扰动，人们可以以可控的方式产生复杂微生物群落的组成和功能变化。扰动可以减少微生物多样性，减少特定微生物类群的丰度，从而扰乱微生物群落内部及其与真核宿主的相互作用。四种不同的微生物组扰动方法，即选择性加热、特定杀菌剂、稀释至灭绝和基因组编辑是这篇小型综述的重点。