Molecular Aspects of Environmental Pollutants on Soil Microbial

Dear Colleagues,

The presence of microorganisms is one of the determinants of soil quality, which also influences its processes. Achieving a good understanding of the soil microbial community remains a challenge due to the complexity of community composition and interactions of the environment. An increase in the environmental pollution level and the possibility of the presence of new substances of anthropogenic origin in the environment make it necessary to monitor the changes that occur in soil microbial communities. Therefore, a multidisciplinary approach combining knowledge and experience from different areas such as sciences of microbiology, toxicology, biotechnology, environmental chemistry, environmental engineering, molecular biology, metagenomics, metaproteomics, and metatranscriptomics should be implemented.

An important issue is the identification of biotic and abiotic factors influencing the microbial composition of soils. Such biomonitoring provides spatial–temporal information on substance loads (pollutants, soil quality parameters, nutrients, chemical oxygen demand, etc.), soil quality assessment, and information provision for pollution mitigation and ecological sustainability. The cognition of the above issues necessitates the use of various molecular tools and analytical, statistical, and bioinformatics techniques to collect reliable results on the one hand and to analyze and process them properly on the other.

This Special Issue is open to extensive review papers and innovative research studies on problems related to the identification and impact of pollutants affecting microbial communities of soils based on molecular biology techniques. Subject areas of the Special Issue include but are not limited to the following:

• Impact of pollution on microbial communities;
• Biomonitoring of soil environment pollution;
• Molecular techniques that allow the detection and characterization of soil microorganisms and new trends, problems and challenges in this area;
• Use of molecular techniques/methodologies to study gene expression and metabolic pathways associated with environmental contaminants;
• New methods and techniques of assessing biodiversity and species abundance;
• Assessment of the impact of pollutants on microorganisms;
• Variability of soil microbial properties;
• New approaches to soil quality and ecological risk assessment.

Dr. Elżbieta Wołejko
Dr. Urszula Wydro
Dr. Agata Jabłońska-Trypuć
Guest Editors

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