Drought and plant litter chemistry alter microbial gene expression and metabolite production

Malik, Ashish A.; Swenson, Tami; Weihe, Claudia; Morrison, Eric W.; Martiny, Jennifer B. H.; Brodie, Eoin L.; Northen, Trent R.; Allison, Steven D.

doi:10.1038/s41396-020-0683-6

Drought and plant litter chemistry alter microbial gene expression and metabolite production

Journal Article · Fri May 22 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · The ISME Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41396-020-0683-6· OSTI ID:1637320

^[1]; ^[2]; Weihe, Claudia ^[3]; ^[4]; ^[3]; ^[5]; ^[2]; ^[6]

Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States). Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology; Univ. of Aberdeen (UK). School of Biological Sciences
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division
Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States). Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States). Dept. of Earth System Science
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Earth and Environmental Sciences Division; Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States). Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Dept. of Earth System Science

Drought represents a significant stress to microorganisms and is known to reduce microbial activity and organic matter decomposition in Mediterranean ecosystems. However, we lack a detailed understanding of the drought stress response of microbial decomposers. Here we present metatranscriptomic and metabolomic data on the physiological response of in situ microbial communities on plant litter to long-term drought in Californian grass and shrub ecosystems. We hypothesised that drought causes greater microbial allocation to stress tolerance relative to growth pathways. In grass litter, communities from the decade-long ambient and reduced precipitation treatments had distinct taxonomic and functional profiles. The most discernable physiological signatures of drought were production or uptake of compatible solutes to maintain cellular osmotic balance, and synthesis of capsular and extracellular polymeric substances as a mechanism to retain water. The results show a clear functional response to drought in grass litter communities with greater allocation to survival relative to growth that could affect decomposition under drought. In contrast, communities on chemically more diverse and complex shrub litter had smaller physiological differences in response to long-term drought but higher investment in resource acquisition traits across precipitation treatments, suggesting that the functional response to drought is constrained by substrate quality. Our findings suggest, for the first time in a field setting, a trade off between microbial drought stress tolerance, resource acquisition and growth traits in plant litter microbial communities.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Institutes of Health (NIH); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; SC0016410

OSTI ID:: 1637320

Journal Information:: The ISME Journal, Journal Name: The ISME Journal Vol. 14; ISSN 1751-7362

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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