Simultaneous Assessment of Soil Microbial Community Structure and Function through Analysis of the Meta-Transcriptome

BACKGROUND: Soil ecosystems harbor the most complex prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbial communities on Earth. Experimental approaches studying these systems usually focus on either the soil community's taxonomic structure or its functional characteristics. Many methods target DNA as marker molecule and use PCR for amplification. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we apply an RNA-centered meta-transcriptomic approach to simultaneously obtain information on both structure and function of a soil community. Total community RNA is random reversely transcribed into cDNA without any PCR or cloning step. Direct pyrosequencing produces large numbers of cDNA rRNA-tags; these are taxonomically profiled in a binning…

• GA
  Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
• UI
  Universitetet i Bergen
• AN
  Argonne National Laboratory