ABSTRACT
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As we have seen in previous chapters, soil microorganisms are metabolically
extremely diverse. As soil microorganisms are responsible for the vast
majority of the biogeochemical processes in soil (see Chapter 9 and Chapter
10), soil functioning is largely dependent on their activities. For this reason,
the assessment of soil microbial community structure (the relative abundance
of populations within the community) and function (the key processes driven
by such populations in soil) through the analysis of DNA and/or RNA
molecules extracted from soil matrices is of fundamental importance to
better understand the soil environment as an ecological system.
