Abstract
A lack of empirical evidence for the microbial regulation of ecosystem processes, including carbon (C) degradation, hinders our ability to develop a framework to directly incorporate the genetic composition of microbial communities in the enzyme-driven Earth system models. Herein we evaluated the linkage between microbial functional genes and extracellular enzyme activity in soil samples collected across three geographical regions of Australia. We found a strong relationship between different functional genes and their corresponding enzyme activities. This relationship was maintained after considering microbial community structure, total C and soil pH using structural equation modelling. Results showed that the variations in the activity of enzymes involved in C degradation were predicted by the functional gene abundance of the soil microbial community (R2>0.90 in all cases). Our findings provide a strong framework for improved predictions on soil C dynamics that could be achieved by adopting a gene-centric approach incorporating the abundance of functional genes into process models.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr IC Rochester, Dr G Vadakattu, Dr K Flower, Dr D Minkey and Dr M McNee for their help in sample collection. The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), Australia via Grant number UWS000008 and Australian Research Council via Grant number DP13010484 funded this work. Drs C Janitz and J King from Next Generation Sequencing Facility of WSU are acknowledged for Pyrosequencing analysis.
Author contributions
PT, MD-B, ICA and BKS designed the study. PT, MDB, CT, BKS, TCJ, HH and JZ analysed the data. PT wrote the manuscript and all the other authors contributed to revisions.
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Trivedi, P., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Trivedi, C. et al. Microbial regulation of the soil carbon cycle: evidence from gene–enzyme relationships. ISME J 10, 2593–2604 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.65
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2016.65
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