Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2016
College/Unit
Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design
Department/Program/Center
Division of Plant and Soil Sciences
Abstract
Fossil fuel combustion and fertilizer use has increased the amount of biologically available N entering terrestrial ecosystems. Nonetheless, our understanding of how anthropogenic N may alter the physiological mechanisms by which soil microorganisms cycle N in soil is still developing. Here, we applied shotgun metagenomics to a replicated long-term field experiment to determine how two decades of experimental N deposition, at a rate expected by mid-century, has affected the genetic potential of the soil microbial community to cycle N in soils. Experimental N deposition lead to a significant and persistent increase in functional assemblages mediating N cycle transformations associated with ecosystem N loss (i.e., denitrification and nitrification), whereas functional assemblages associated with N input and retention (i.e., N fixation and microbial N assimilation) were less positively affected. Furthermore, the abundance and composition of microbial taxa, as well as functional assemblages involved in housekeeping functions (i.e., DNA replication) were unaffected by experimental N deposition. Taken together, our results suggest that functional genes and gene pathways associated with ecosystem N loss have been favored by experimental N deposition, which may represent a genetic mechanism fostering increased N loss as anthropogenic N deposition increases in the future
Digital Commons Citation
Freedman, Zachary B.; Upchurch, Rima A.; and Zak, Donald R., "Microbial Potential for Ecosystem N Loss Is Increased by Experimental N Deposition" (2016). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 1775.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/1775
Source Citation
Freedman, Z. B., Upchurch, R. A., & Zak, D. R. (2016). Microbial Potential for Ecosystem N Loss Is Increased by Experimental N Deposition. PLOS ONE, 11(10), e0164531. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164531
Comments
© 2016 Freedman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.