skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Short-term transcriptional response of microbial communities to N-fertilization in pine forest soil

Journal Article · · Applied and Environmental Microbiology
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.00598-18· OSTI ID:1441353

Numerous studies have examined the long-term effect of experimental nitrogen (N) deposition in terrestrial ecosystems, however N-specific mechanistic markers are difficult to disentangle from responses to other environmental changes. The strongest picture of N-responsive mechanistic markers is likely to arise from measurements over a short (hours to days) timescale immediately after inorganic N deposition. Therefore, we assessed the short-term (3-day) transcriptional response of microbial communities in two soil strata from a pine forest to a high dose of N fertilization (c.a. 1mg/g of soil material) in laboratory microcosms. Here, we hypothesized that N fertilization would repress the expression of fungal and bacterial genes linked to N-mining from plant litter. However, despite N-suppression of microbial respiration, the most pronounced differences in functional gene expression were between strata rather than in response to the N addition. Overall, ~4% of metabolic genes changed in expression with N addition, while three times as many (~12%) were significantly different across the different soil strata in the microcosms. In particular, we found little evidence of N changing expression levels of metabolic genes associated with complex carbohydrate degradation (CAZymes) or inorganic N utilization. This suggests that direct N repression of microbial functional gene expression is not the principle mechanism for reduced soil respiration immediately after N deposition. Instead, changes in expression with N addition occurred primarily in general cell maintenance areas, for example in ribosome-related transcripts. Transcriptional changes in functional gene abundance in response to N-addition observed in longer-term field studies likely results from changes in microbial composition.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1441353
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-18-21874; 1098-5336 (Electronic)
Journal Information:
Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Vol. 84, Issue 15; ISSN 0099-2240
Publisher:
American Society for MicrobiologyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 7 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (81)

Molecular analysis of fungal communities and laccase genes in decomposing litter reveals differences among forest types but no impact of nitrogen deposition journal May 2007
Common patterns – unique features: nitrogen metabolism and regulation in Gram-positive bacteria journal July 2010
Genetic regulation of nitrogen metabolism in the fungi. journal January 1997
Thermodynamics of the control of metabolism journal December 1987
Technical Report: Human Alteration of the Global Nitrogen Cycle: Sources and Consequences journal August 1997
Nitrogen additions and microbial biomass: a meta-analysis of ecosystem studies journal October 2008
Microbial Responses to Long-Term N Deposition in a Semiarid Grassland journal January 2006
Linkages Between Microbial and Hydrologic Processes in arid and Semiarid Watersheds journal February 2005
Integrating biogeochemistry with multiomic sequence information in a model oxygen minimum zone journal September 2016
Contrasting soil fungal community responses to experimental nitrogen addition using the large subunit rRNA taxonomic marker and cellobiohydrolase I functional marker journal August 2014
Steady-state and dynamic gene expression programs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae in response to variation in environmental nitrogen journal April 2016
Microbes as Engines of Ecosystem Function: When Does Community Structure Enhance Predictions of Ecosystem Processes? journal February 2016
Nitrogen Assimilation in Escherichia coli: Putting Molecular Data into a Systems Perspective journal December 2013
Maturation and degradation of RNA in bacteria journal June 2007
MEGAN Community Edition - Interactive Exploration and Analysis of Large-Scale Microbiome Sequencing Data journal June 2016
Soil Fungal Cellobiohydrolase I Gene ( cbhI ) Composition and Expression in a Loblolly Pine Plantation under Conditions of Elevated Atmospheric CO 2 and Nitrogen Fertilization journal March 2012
The influence of precipitation pulses on soil respiration – Assessing the “Birch effect” by stable carbon isotopes journal October 2010
Microbial community response to nitrogen deposition in northern forest ecosystems journal September 2004
MEGAHIT: an ultra-fast single-node solution for large and complex metagenomics assembly via succinct de Bruijn graph journal January 2015
Microbial mediation of biogeochemical cycles revealed by simulation of global changes with soil transplant and cropping journal April 2014
N dynamics in the rhizosphere of Pinus ponderosa seedlings journal March 1996
A thready affair: linking fungal diversity and community dynamics to terrestrial decomposition processes journal July 2013
Ligninolytic enzyme system of Phanaerochaete chrysosporium: synthesized in the absence of lignin in response to nitrogen starvation. journal January 1978
Identification of laccase-like genes in ectomycorrhizal basidiomycetes and transcriptional regulation by nitrogen in Piloderma byssinum journal March 2003
Changes in Fungal Community Composition in Response to Elevated Atmospheric CO2 and Nitrogen Fertilization Varies with Soil Horizon journal January 2013
dbCAN: a web resource for automated carbohydrate-active enzyme annotation journal May 2012
Competition for nitrogen between plants and soil microorganisms journal April 1997
Comparative metatranscriptomics reveals widespread community responses during phenanthrene degradation in soil: Metatranscriptomic analysis of phenanthrene amended soil journal May 2012
Nitrogen Cycles: Past, Present, and Future journal September 2004
Fast and sensitive protein alignment using DIAMOND journal November 2014
Systems biology may work when we learn to understand the parts in terms of the whole journal June 2005
Transcriptional regulation of plant cell wall degradation by filamentous fungi journal September 2005
Extracellular Enzyme Activities and Soil Organic Matter Dynamics for Northern Hardwood Forests receiving Simulated Nitrogen Deposition journal August 2005
Metagenomic reconstruction of nitrogen cycling pathways in a CO2-enriched grassland ecosystem journal March 2017
Atmospheric N Deposition Increases Bacterial Laccase-Like Multicopper Oxidases: Implications for Organic Matter Decay journal May 2014
Simulated Atmospheric N Deposition Alters Fungal Community Composition and Suppresses Ligninolytic Gene Expression in a Northern Hardwood Forest journal June 2011
Forest floor community metatranscriptomes identify fungal and bacterial responses to N deposition in two maple forests journal April 2015
KEGG as a reference resource for gene and protein annotation journal October 2015
Expression patterns of elemental cycling genes in the Amazon River Plume journal April 2017
Systems-based approaches to unravel multi-species microbial community functioning journal January 2015
Bridging the gap between omics and earth system science to better understand how environmental change impacts marine microbes journal July 2015
Microbial Mechanisms Mediating Increased Soil C Storage under Elevated Atmospheric N Deposition journal December 2012
Dispersing misconceptions and identifying opportunities for the use of 'omics' in soil microbial ecology journal June 2015
The Pfam protein families database: towards a more sustainable future journal December 2015
Global biogeography of microbial nitrogen-cycling traits in soil journal July 2016
Ocean biogeochemistry modeled with emergent trait-based genomics journal November 2017
Accelerated Profile HMM Searches journal October 2011
Soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics throughout the summer drought in a California annual grassland journal December 2017
Emergence and Its Place in Nature: A Case Study of Biochemical Networks journal May 2005
Diverse Marinimicrobia bacteria may mediate coupled biogeochemical cycles along eco-thermodynamic gradients journal November 2017
Reference sequence (RefSeq) database at NCBI: current status, taxonomic expansion, and functional annotation journal November 2015
Spatial and temporal effects on plant-microbial competition for inorganic nitrogen in a california annual grassland journal January 1989
PEAR: a fast and accurate Illumina Paired-End reAd mergeR journal October 2013
Pulse dynamics and microbial processes in aridland ecosystems: Pulse dynamics in aridland soils journal March 2008
MetaQUAST: evaluation of metagenome assemblies journal November 2015
Re-assessment of plant carbon dynamics at the Duke free-air CO2 enrichment site: interactions of atmospheric [CO2] with nitrogen and water availability over stand development journal November 2009
Short-term partitioning of ammonium and nitrate between plants and microbes in an annual grassland journal January 1989
Permafrost Meta-Omics and Climate Change journal June 2016
Nitrogen Mineralization: Challenges of a Changing Paradigm journal March 2004
Reduction of forest soil respiration in response to nitrogen deposition journal April 2010
The SEED and the Rapid Annotation of microbial genomes using Subsystems Technology (RAST) journal November 2013
The metagenomics RAST server – a public resource for the automatic phylogenetic and functional analysis of metagenomes journal September 2008
Deciphering the Principles of Bacterial Nitrogen Dietary Preferences: a Strategy for Nutrient Containment journal July 2016
Differential analysis of RNA-seq incorporating quantification uncertainty journal June 2017
Microbial Growth and Carbon Use Efficiency in the Rhizosphere and Root-Free Soil journal April 2014
Nitrogen deposition as an important nutrient from the environment and its impact on ecosystems in China: Nitrogen deposition as an important nutrient from the environment and its impact on ecosystems in China journal June 2010
Systems Biology: The elements and principles of Life journal November 2009
Near-optimal probabilistic RNA-seq quantification journal April 2016
Field and lab conditions alter microbial enzyme and biomass dynamics driving decomposition of the same leaf litter journal January 2013
Profile hidden Markov models journal October 1998
Nitrogen fertilization inhibits soil microbial respiration regardless of the form of nitrogen applied journal December 2010
Detection of Large Numbers of Novel Sequences in the Metatranscriptomes of Complex Marine Microbial Communities journal August 2008
FragGeneScan-plus for scalable high-throughput short-read open reading frame prediction conference August 2015
Nitrogen deposition may enhance soil carbon storage via change of soil respiration dynamic during a spring freeze-thaw cycle period journal June 2016
Nitrogen regulation of lignin peroxidase gene transcription. journal January 1994
Genetic regulation of nitrogen metabolism in the fungi journal March 1997
Molecular profiling of microbial community structure and their CAZymes via metagenomics, from Tsomgo lake in the Eastern Himalayas journal April 2021
Extra virgin olive oil improved body weight and insulin sensitivity in high fat diet-induced obese LDLr−/−.Leiden mice without attenuation of steatohepatitis journal April 2021
Polinton-like viruses are abundant in aquatic ecosystems journal January 2021
Microbial Mechanisms Mediating Increased Soil C Storage under Elevated Atmospheric N Deposition journal April 2013
MEGAHIT: An ultra-fast single-node solution for large and complex metagenomics assembly via succinct de Bruijn graph preprint January 2014

Cited By (1)

Soil biodiversity and biogeochemical function in managed ecosystems journal January 2020

Figures / Tables (4)