Funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, i.e. the Sino-Russian International Cooperation Project (NSFC-RFBC), “Microbiological Mechanism of Soil Organic Matter Transformation Temperature Sensitivity: Metabolic Activity, Genetic Diversity and Community Structure” (31811530080), Irina Kravchenko and Marina Sukhacheva, senior researchers from the Biotechnology Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Semenov, researcher from the V.V. Dokuchaev Soil Institute, conducted a seven-day visit and academic exchange to the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from September 23^rd to 29^th, 2018.

The three Russian experts visited the Changbai Mountain Forest Ecosystem Research Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and exchanged opinions with researchers there on forest field experimental studies and facilities, focusing on the real-time soil respiration monitoring devices and meteorological data monitoring equipment. The Russian experts also visited the research platforms of the molecular biology laboratory and the microbial resources strain library at IAE. SU Zhencheng told the visitors about the status of instruments and microbial strains of the molecular biology laboratory. The two sides discussed the current mainstream instruments and test kits required for microbial molecular ecology research.

Russian experts also visited the laboratories of the soil chemical group, microbial resources & ecology group, environmental microbiology group, and microbial ecology & technology group. Dr. WANG Yuzhen, associate researcher of the soil chemical group, informed the visitors of the operation state of large instruments such as atomic absorption spectrometer and elemental analyzers. XU Mingkai, researcher of the Microbial Resources & Ecology Research Group, briefed the microbial degradation of corn stalk experiment, the lab-batch instrument for microbial fermentation, the "super-antigen" microbial agent project and other on-going projects. Prof. XU Hui and Dr. SUN Hao of the environmental microbiology group briefly introduced the visitor to their studies on microbial treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater and to their studies on soil bacteriophage. ZHANG Ying, researcher of the microbial ecology & technology research group, briefly stated the research and application aspects of their microbial enhanced oil recovery technology. Russian experts shown great interest in these research projects and praised IAE not only for its solid theoretical research, but also for the broad application prospects of its technology.

On September 29th, Prof. LI Hui, PI of the international cooperation project, as well as all the researchers and graduate students of the soil chemistry group conducted in-depth exchanges with the Russian experts on microbial ecological mechanism of soil organic carbon mineralization in forest ecosystems. Prof. LI Hui and Dr. YANG Shan introduced the Russian experts to the progress and preliminary results of their studies, including the selection of research plots, the distribution characteristics of natural broad-leaved Korean pine forests in Northeast China, the temperature-sensitivity, seasonal patterns and underlying microbial mechanisms of soil organic carbon mineralization along latitudinal gradient. The two sides discussed the technical details, including the primer bias problem in analyzing microbial community structure using Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing platform, the degenerate primer used in real-time PCR for detecting functional genes, and the applications of functional gene chip in microbial community analysis. Russian experts suggested their Chinese partners to do more data mining based on the current results and make a great effort to publish high-level papers.

Both Dr. Kravchenko and Dr. Semenov gave talks at IAE. Dr. Kravchenko's talk, entitled "Microbial oxidation of atmospheric methane in native and agricultural soils", focused on the diversity and population composition of methane-oxidizing microorganisms in cultivated and non-cultivated soils. The talk by Dr. Semenov was entitled "Physiological state of soil microbial communities determined by soil DNA- and RNA-based analyzes”. Dr. Semenov highlighted that quantitative DNA extracted from soil can be used as a measure of soil microbial biomass, and DNA: RNA ratio can be used as an indicator of the physiological activity of microbial communities. More than 50 researchers and graduate students of IAE, including Dr. Ember Morrissey from West Virginia University of US who happened to be visiting IAE, participated in the academic exchange and discussion. (Photo: Soil Chemistry Group of IAE)