Great strides have been made during the past few years in developing and applying a range of comprehensive molecular methods to complex microbial systems. These meta-omics methods attempt to capture and identify the collective complement of a microbial community’s DNA (metagenomics), RNA (metatranscriptomics), proteins (metaproteomics), lipids (lipidomics) and metabolic products (meta-metabolomics). Recently meta-omics have been attempted in soils, arguably the most complex microbial community on the planet. This symposium will examine some of these initial applications of –omics to soils, identify the challenges still to be overcome, and evaluate their potential utility for better understanding of soil microbial communities.

S03 Soil Biology & Biochemistry