The ecology of microorganisms, the most diverse and abundant group of organisms on Earth, has entered a period of considerable importance to science in general, industry, protection of the environment, and public policy making. Environmental microbes are immensely diverse and have numerous metabolic activities and products that could have industrial applications. This treasured reservoir is largely untapped since more than 99% of environmental microbes cannot be cultured under current laboratory conditions, leaving their potential largely unexploited. Metagenomic, metatranscriptomics, and other omic technologies have been effectively applied for the characterization of the hidden microbial diversity and for obtaining novel microbial products. Understanding the unculturable fraction of Earth's microbiome is essential to understand the evolution, sustainability of life on Earth, and the development of various industrial products that have potential applications across all major industries and for the control of pests and diseases to humans, plants, and animals.

For the above reasons, we invite researchers all over the world to contribute with original articles, as well as reviews that will stimulate the continuing efforts to understand the hidden microbial diversity, to develop new technologies that can lead to potential biotechnological developments, and also for the use of microbes to suppress insect populations of environmental, agricultural, and medical importance. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Microbial ecology
• Arid ecosystems
• Microbial evolution
• Bioremediation
• Bioenergy
• Fermentation
• Arthropod symbionts
• Biodiscovery, antibiotic resistance, new antibiotics
• Omic technologies: genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics
• Bioinformatics and biotechnology

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/bmri/biotechnology/mdb/ according to the following timetable: