Page 100 - University of Pretoria Research Review 2017
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The world is teeming with invisible microorganisms: a teaspoon of garden soil may contain 100 million microbial cells of a thousand different taxa.
Just in the last decade, and largely driven by the advent of very high-volume and relatively low-cost DNA sequencing, we have come to appreciate
just how diverse and how important microorganisms are in natural environments, whether in agricultural soils, marine waters or the human gut. Microbiomes are now seen as critical elements of human (and other animal) well-being, crop productivity, soil health and environmental control, for example, and as important agents for bioremediation and environmental protection. They are also increasingly viewed as valuable genetic resources, and targets for bioprospecting.
MICROBIAL ECOLOGY
AND BIODIVERSITY
