Regulation of microbial activities, structure and function of microbial communities

In the frame of the project microbial turnover processes of phosphorous shall be investigated in forest soils and drivers for the corresponding populations as well as their activity pattern shall be described. Furthermore microbial transport and uptake systems for phosphorous should be characterized to understand the competition between plants and microbes for phosphorous in more detail, in relation to the availability of phosphorous and other nutrients. Therefore it is planned to investigate different soil compartments with different nutrient amounts (litter layer – rhizosphere – bulk soil). To reach the described goal molecular metagenomic methods will be used to characterize the structure and function of microbial communities as well as to describe the regulation of selected important pathways. In addition quantitative real time PCR and enzymatic measurements will be used to describe the abundance and activity of the corresponding populations and to describe their relevance for P turnover in the different soil compartments under investigation. With this we hope to reconstruct mainly the microbial phosphorous cycle and give important data to improve the model development of P dynamics in forest soils.

For further information,see:
Egen - Research Unit Environmental Genomics