A Genomic Catalogue of Soil Microbiomes Boosts Mining of Biodiversity and Genetic Resources

Tremendous amounts of unidentified microbes harbored in soils are referred to as soil microbial dark matter and are arguably a crucial trove of microbial biodiversity and genetic resources. However, the diversity of microbial and genetic resources is unexcavated. Here we conducted the first large-scale excavation of soil microbial dark matter establishing the SMAG catalog by reconstructing 40,039 metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) from 3,304 soil metagenomes.