Soil molecular microbial ecology at age 20: methodological challenges for the future

The year 2000 marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication in Soil Biology & Biochemistry by Vigdis L. Torsvik (University of Bergen) of the first procedure for isolation of bacterial DNA from soil (Torsvik, 1980), arguably initiating the subdiscipline of soil molecular microbial ecology. Since 1980, great strides have been made in the development of methods and in the application of genetic tools to analysis of soil microbial communities, and many soil microbiology laboratories routinely incorporate these tools in their research. It is likely that the concept of soil molecular ecology will soon disappear as a subdiscipline of microbial ecology, and that these tools will become as routine and indispensable as are genetic tools in microbial physiology. However, even though increasing numbers of soil microbiologists use molecular biology in their research, some fundamental obstacles must be overcome before these tools become as routine as are, for example, many soil chemical methods. This anniversary provides an opportunity for retrospection on the applicability of genetic tools to soil microbial ecology, and of methodological needs for the immediate future.