School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
J Microbiol Methods. 2012 Nov;91(2):246-51. doi: 10.1016/j.mimet.2012.08.011. Epub 2012 Aug 29.
The activities of soil microbial communities are of critical importance to terrestrial ecosystem functioning. The mechanisms that determine the interactions between soil microorganisms, their environment and neighbouring organisms, however, are poorly understood. Due to advances in sequencing technologies, an increasing number of metagenomics studies are being conducted on samples from diverse environments including soils. This information has not only increased our awareness of the functional potential of soil microbial communities, but also constitutes powerful reference material for soil metatranscriptomics studies. Metatranscriptomics provides a snapshot of transcriptional profiles that correspond to discrete populations within a microbial community at the time of sampling. This information can indicate the potential activities of complex microbial communities and the mechanisms that regulate them. Here we summarise the technical challenges for metatranscriptomics applied to soil environments and discuss approaches for gaining biologically meaningful insight into these datasets.
土壤微生物群落的活性对陆地生态系统的功能至关重要。然而，决定土壤微生物与其环境和邻近生物相互作用的机制还知之甚少。由于测序技术的进步，越来越多的针对包括土壤在内的各种环境样本的宏基因组学研究正在进行。这些信息不仅提高了我们对土壤微生物群落功能潜力的认识，而且为土壤宏转录组学研究提供了有力的参考材料。宏转录组学提供了在采样时对应于微生物群落中离散种群的转录谱的快照。这些信息可以指示复杂微生物群落的潜在活性及其调节机制。在这里，我们总结了应用于土壤环境的宏转录组学的技术挑战，并讨论了深入了解这些数据集的生物学意义的方法。
