The Soil Environment
Kornelia Smalla and Jan Dirk van Elsas
from: Environmental Molecular Microbiology (Edited by: Wen-Tso Liu and Janet K. Jansson). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2010)
Abstract
Until fairly recently, the living soil has been considered as a functional black box that is intrinsically too difficult to be unravelled into its core components. However, this concept has changed with the advent of the modern methodologies. Here, we examine how our understanding of the intricacies of microbial life in soil has been impacted by the advanced, mainly molecularly-based, approaches that have been unleashed on the soil habitat in recent years. Truly, although the soil 'microbial black box' is still far from being completely opened, the application of molecular and other advanced methods (allowing the so-called cultivation-independent analyses) has provided exciting new insights into microbial (in particular bacterial) life in soil read more ...
