Meta-Omics to Understand the Behavior of Multispecies Microbial Communities

Our understanding of the soil microbial community structure, metabolic capacity, and metabolic activity is changing due to new meta-omics technologies. A paradigm change in the knowledge of the behavior of multispecies of microbial communities has been brought about by the revolutionary integration strategy known as meta-omics, which is based on the in-depth investigation of microbiomes. Such “meta-omic” methods make thousands of microorganisms’ genes, transcripts, and eventually proteins and metabolites available for studying biochemical function and interactions at the systems level. Each of these meta-omics approaches represents the taxa that are present (16S rRNA), the genes and potential biochemical reactions that are present (meta-genomics), the transcription and translation status of those genes (meta-transcriptomics), the translation status of those genes (meta-proteomics), or the metabolic state of the organisms (metabolomics). Integrating multi-omics data allows unraveling of intricate microbial interactions that mold and limit a microbial community.