A tale of two data sets: New DNA analysis strategy helps researchers cut through the dirt
For soil microbiology, it is the best of times. While no one has undertaken an accurate census, a spoonful of soil holds hundreds of billions of microbial cells, encompassing thousands of species. "It's one of the most diverse microbial habitats on Earth, yet we know surprisingly little about the identities and functions of the microbes inhabiting soil," said Jim Tiedje, Distinguished Professor at the Center for Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University. Tiedje, along with MSU colleagues and collaborators from the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), have published the largest soil DNA sequencing effort to date in the March 10, 2014, issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). What has emerged in this first of the studies to come from this project is a simple, elegant solution to sifting through the deluge of information gleaned, as...