The 5^th Annual Argonne Soil Metagenomics Meeting will take place October 2–4, 2013 at the Indian Lakes Resort Hilton in Bloomingdale, Illinois, USA.

We are pleased to be collaborating with both the TerraGenome and the Enzymes in the Environment Research Coordination Networks this year! In light of this collaboration, the meeting theme will be Soil metagenomics: enzymes, processes, and ecosystem function. The focus of the meeting will be using metagenomic data to derive knowledge of process and function across scales. Sequencing techniques have matured beyond gene or species inventories, and so the possibilities are now endless for linking metagenomes to processes in soils and ecosystems. Topics will include enzyme discovery from genomic information, functional metagenomic techniques (e.g., metatranscriptomics, proteomics, SIP), and bioinformatic approaches to complex datasets.

We invite presentations on any aspect of soil metagenomics, including lab and field experiments that use metagenomic sequence data and those that focus on bioinformatic tools and techniques relevant to soil research. Research utilizing shotgun sequencing (metagenomes or metatranscriptomes) is especially encouraged, although community analysis (e.g., 16S) projects are welcome, particularly if they link community structure to function.

This year, we are also coordinating with our European colleagues who will be convening a sister meeting in Braunschweig, Germany. The 2nd Thünen Symposium on Soil Metagenomics will be held December 11–13, 2013 with the theme Mining and Learning from Metagenomes. Please visit www.soil-metagenomics.org for more information and to register.

The needs of this interdisciplinary (and international) community are ongoing, and these meetings will provide venues for soil scientists, ecologists, computational scientists, and molecular microbiologists to discuss continuing challenges and share progress focused on the needs specific to soil metagenomics research.

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