Correction to: The ISME Journal (2014) 8, 564–574; doi:10.1038/ismej.2013.172; published online 3 October 2013

Since the publication of this article, the authors have identified an omission in the ‘Conflict of Interest’ section. The missing statement is as follows:

Dr Wenyuan Shi is a part time Chief Science Officer of C3 Jian Inc., which has licensed technologies from UC Regents that could be indirectly related to this research project.

The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.