Comparative metagenomic analysis of soil microbial communities in tropical and temperate forests

We applied a comparative metagenomic approach to characterize the taxonomical and functional properties of microbial communities in forest soils, using short-read sequence data obtained by the Illumina Genome Analyser (GA) II sequencer. Five soil samples from Sarawak, Malaysia (Borneo), including from three mixed dipterocarp forests, a secondary forest and a burned forest and one soil sample from a primary temperate forest in Japan were analyzed to investigate the relationship between soil microbial communities and forest degradations or vegetational differences.