Microbial ecology is the ecology of microorganisms: their relationship with one another and with their environment. It concerns the three major domains of life—Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria—as well as viruses. . Microbial life plays a primary role in regulating biogeochemicalsystems in virtually all of our planet's environments, including some of the most extreme, from frozen environments and acidic lakes, tohydrothermal vents at the bottom of deepest oceans, and some of the most familiar, such as the human small intestine. hey are the backbone of all ecosystems, but even more so in the zones where light cannot approach and thus photosynthesis cannot be the basic means to collect energy. In such zones, chemosynthetic microbes provide energy and carbon to the other organisms. The research in the Microbial Ecology Group is aiming at identifying the microorganisms that carry out carbon and nitrogen turnover in soils, particularly forest soils, characterize these processes and identify how they are regulated under different environmental scenarios The study of microbial ecology can help us improve our lives via the use of microbes in environmental restoration, food production, bioengineering of useful products such as antibiotics, food supplements, and chemicals.