How Virginia State University Is Helping Lead A Nationwide Effort To Identify Soil Microbes

Through hands-on research in the BioDIGS Project, VSU students are helping uncover thousands of previously unknown soil microbes.

Dr. Xianfa Xie

A Virginia State University professor and a team of students are working with other researchers across the United States to better understand what lies beneath our feet.

Dr. Xianfa Xie, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Founding Director of the VSU Center for Biotechnology, Genomics, and Bioinformatics (CBGB), is one of the founding members of the BioDiversity and Informatics for Genomics Scholars (BioDIGS) Consortium. This federally funded project unites students, researchers, and educators from more than 40 institutions across the U.S.

Research from the project has already led to the discovery of more than 1,000 new strains of bacteria and previously unknown microbes. Led by Dr. Xie, the VSU team is working together with other colleagues across the country to characterize the identity, function, and genomic composition of nearly 99% of soil microorganisms that remain unstudied, a phenomenon researchers refer to as microbial “dark matter.”

From left, Michael Marone, research technician at the Center for Biotechnology, Genomics and Bioinformatics; Arinzechukwu Egwu, a biology major; Alani Horton, a biology and chemistry double major; and Daja Carter, a computer science major.

Studying these microorganisms is critical because some play essential roles in ecosystems and support fungal, animal, and plant life, while others can contribute to human and animal health in a variety of ways.

As part of the BioDIGS Project, one of the nation’s largest efforts to study soil microbial diversity, VSU students gain hands-on experience collecting soil samples, analyzing data, and discovering how these tiny organisms affect environmental, animal, and human health.

“We are happy to be part of this nationwide organization working on such a meaningful research project,” said Dr. Xie. “Projects like this are the best way to train our students to become leaders in today’s scientific and technological fields, providing them with in-depth knowledge and practical skills through extensive research experience.”

For the past two years, the VSU team has collected soil samples from the VSU campus and nearby locations, analyzing them at the state-of-the-art CBGB facility.

The consortium’s work was recently highlighted in Nature Genetics, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, with Dr. Xie as one of the corresponding authors and some other members of the VSU team as co-authors.

“I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to contribute to a project published in Nature Genetics,” said Arinzechukwu Egwu, a junior biology major at VSU and one of Dr. Xie’s advisees. “It allowed me to engage in high-impact research, build professional networks through a nationwide collaboration, and gain foundational experience that will directly shape my future career in biomedical research.”

According to Dr. Xie, this was just the first publication for this collaborative research project, and the project continues to offer opportunities for VSU undergraduate and graduate students across multiple disciplines to contribute to new discoveries by analyzing the large-scale genomic data generated through the latest DNA sequencing technologies.

As a leading research institution, Virginia State University continues to support faculty and student-led initiatives like the BioDIGS Project, advancing its role as a hub for scientific discovery that benefits the broader community.