The study of transcription regulatory networks in bacterial communities will greatly benefit our mechanistic understanding of C and N cycling in soil ecosystems and reveal how individual bacterial taxa integrate into whole community responses. Moreover, the study will generate essential information on life-history traits and ecological strategies for hundreds of bacterial taxa, many of which are uncultivable, including so-called “dark-matter” species. This approach can easily be expanded to include fungi and archaea, and applied to other microbial communities, such as those in marine ecosystems, waste-water treatment plants, industrial digesters, agriculture and those associated with human health.
Proposer: Paul Dijkstra, Northern Arizona University