The secret diversity under our feet

The document describes innovative research on microbial diversity in terrestrial habitats, using long-read DNA sequencing and a new bioinformatics workflow, mmlong2. This study successfully recovered 15,314 previously undescribed microbial species genomes from soil and sediment samples. These findings significantly expand the catalog of microbial genomes and the phylogenetic diversity of the prokaryotic tree of life. The research highlights the efficiency of long-read sequencing for obtaining high-quality genomes in complex ecosystems. Additionally, the inclusion of these new genomes substantially improved species classification in existing metagenomic datasets, providing a valuable resource for future microbiome studies.Source: Sereika, M., Mussig, A.J., Jiang, C. et al. Genome-resolved long-read sequencing expands known microbial diversity across terrestrial habitats. Nat Microbiol 10, 2018–2030 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-025-02062-z