Tremendous progress has been made since high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies entered the field of soil microbiology, and the scientific community involved in soil omics studies is continuously growing. With that development, there is also higher demand for guiding young scientists into this exciting field providing them with the best analytical tools available but also with a critical understanding of what can be achieved and which problems will require more research. Continuing the legacy of the first three Thünen Symposia, we would like to provide the opportunity for participants to learn about the latest progress at the intersection of microbial bioinformatics and soil ecology. Key issues of the 4th Symposium relate to spatial organization of soil microbial communities and to the study of neglected groups, i.e. soil viruses and protists. The workshop flanking the symposium provides the opportunity to learn about techniques for metagenomic analyses and beyond (transcriptomes and proteome).

Major Topics

Microbial Diversity
Bioinformatics and meta-analyses
Microbiomes and ecosystem services
Microbiomes in the root-soil continuum
Managing microbiomes for agriculture and environmental health
Dynamic variation and spatial heterogeneity
Retrieving new products from microbiomes
The soil mobilome and resistome
The soil virome and protistome
Use of omics-analyses in systems ecology