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Wang N, Ding D, Zhang H, Ding X, Zhang D, Yao C, Fan X, Ding R, Wang H, Jiang T. Anthropogenic activity shapes the assemble and co-occurrence pattern of microbial communities in fishing harbors around the Bohai economic circle. ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH 2024; 259:119563. [PMID: 38971358 DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2024.119563] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/27/2024] [Revised: 06/25/2024] [Accepted: 07/03/2024] [Indexed: 07/08/2024]
Abstract
This study aimed to elucidate the effects of coastal environmental stress on the composition of sediment bacterial communities and their cooccurrence patterns in fishing harbors around the Bohai Economic Circle, China. Compared with the natural sea area, fishing harbors contained higher levels of organic pollution (organic pollution index = 0.12 ± 0.026) and considerably reduced bacterial richness and evenness. The distributions of sediment microbial communities clustered along the pollutant concentration gradients across fishing harbors. Betaproteobacteria dominated (76%) organically polluted fishing harbors, which were mostly disturbed by anthropogenic activities. However, the harbors also revealed the absence of numerous pathogenic (Coxiella and Legionella) and photosynthetic (Synechococcus and Leptolyngbya) bacteria. Abundant genera, including Thiobacillus and Arenimonas, exhibited a positive correlation with total phosphorus and a negative correlation with total nitrogen in sediments. Meanwhile, Sulfurovum, Psychrobacter, and Woeseia showed the opposite trend. Pollutant accumulation and anthropogenic activities caused the decrease in the sediment microbial diversity and dispersal ability and promoted convergent evolution. Severely polluted harbors with simplified cooccurrence networks revealed the presence of destabilized microbial communities. In addition, the modularity of bacterial networks decreased with organic pollution. Our results provide important insights into the adjustment mechanism of microbial communities to community organization and functions under environmental pollution stress. Overall, this study enhanced our understanding of how microbial communities in coastal sediments adapted and survived amidst anthropogenic activities like oily effluent discharges from large ships, wash water, domestic sewage, garbage, and fisheries wastes. It also examined their resilience to future contamination.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nan Wang
- School of Ocean, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, China
| | - Dongsheng Ding
- Key Laboratory of Sustainable Development of Marine Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China
| | - Huihui Zhang
- School of Ocean, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, China
| | - Xiaokun Ding
- School of Ocean, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, China
| | - Di Zhang
- School of Ocean, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, China
| | - Chenghao Yao
- Shandong Hongxin Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd, China
| | - Xiao Fan
- Key Laboratory of Sustainable Development of Marine Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China
| | - RenYe Ding
- Key Laboratory of Sustainable Development of Marine Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Qingdao, 266071, China
| | - Hualong Wang
- College of Marine Life Sciences, Institute of Evolution and Marine Biodiversity, Frontiers Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System, And Key Lab of Polar Oceanography and Global Ocean Change, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003, China.
| | - Tao Jiang
- School of Ocean, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, China.
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Lin L, Li G, Yu H, Ma K. pH Nonlinearly Dominates Soil Bacterial Community Assembly along an Altitudinal Gradient in Oak-Dominant Forests. Microorganisms 2024; 12:1877. [PMID: 39338551 PMCID: PMC11434175 DOI: 10.3390/microorganisms12091877] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2024] [Revised: 09/02/2024] [Accepted: 09/07/2024] [Indexed: 09/30/2024] Open
Abstract
Soil bacteria, the predominant microbiota in soil, are subject to the law of minimum and the law of tolerance, but the assembly patterns of soil bacteria in response to environmental factors remain far from clear. Here, we took advantage of an altitudinal gradient (1020-1770 asl) in oak-dominant forests and assessed whether soil bacteria linearly or nonlinearly respond to environmental properties through the changes in the community diversity and composition. We found that soil bacteria decreased with increasing altitude in terms of the species richness and phylogenetic structure, while they were unchanged with increasing altitude in terms of community composition. The species richness was nonlinearly affected by the soil pH (19.9%), C:N ratio (14.3%), SOC (11.4%), and silt + clay content (9.9%). Specifically, the species richness peaked at a pH of 5.5-6.5, and an SOC of 25-50 g kg-1, and it showed abrupt decreases and increases at a C:N ratio of 14.5 and a silt + clay content of 70%. The community composition was significantly affected by the soil pH (28.2%), then by the SOC (3.6%), available phosphorus (1.0%), and silt + clay content (0.5%), and it showed less turnovers at a pH of 6.0, SOC of 50 g kg-1, and available phosphorus > 3.0 g kg-1. These findings imply that environmental filtering processes nonlinearly shape bacterial communities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Litao Lin
- Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China;
| | - Guixiang Li
- Weifang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Weifang 261071, China;
| | - Huiyi Yu
- Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China;
| | - Keming Ma
- State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China
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3
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Oliveira EVDS, Landim MF, Gouveia SF. Assembly structures of coastal woody species of eastern South America: Patterns and drivers. PLANT DIVERSITY 2024; 46:611-620. [PMID: 39290883 PMCID: PMC11403147 DOI: 10.1016/j.pld.2024.04.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2023] [Revised: 04/08/2024] [Accepted: 04/16/2024] [Indexed: 09/19/2024]
Abstract
Tropical regions have provided new insights into how ecological communities are assembled. In dry coastal communities, water stress has been hypothesized to determine plant assembly structure by favoring preadapted lineages from neighboring ecosystems, consistent with functional clustering. However, it is unclear whether this hypothesis is sufficient to explain how coastal communities in tropical ecosystems are assembled. Here, we test whether water stress or other factors drive community assembly in woody plant communities across the coastal zone of Brazil, a tropical ecosystem. We characterized functional and phylogenetic structures of these communities and determined the underlying environmental factors (e.g., water stress, historical climate stability, edaphic constraints, and habitat heterogeneity) that drive their community assembly. Assemblages of coastal woody species show geographically varied patterns, including stochastic arrangements, clustering, and overdispersion of species relative to their traits and phylogenetic relatedness. Topographic complexity, water vapor pressure, and soil nutrient availability best explained the gradient in the functional structure. Water deficit, water vapor pressure, and soil organic carbon were the best predictors of variation in phylogenetic structure. Our results support the water-stress conservatism hypothesis on functional and phylogenetic structure, as well as the effect of habitat heterogeneity on functional structure and edaphic constraints on functional and phylogenetic structure. These effects are associated with increased phenotypic and phylogenetic divergence of woody plant assemblages, which is likely mediated by abiotic filtering and niche opportunities, suggesting a complex pattern of ecological assembly.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eduardo Vinícius da Silva Oliveira
- Graduate Program in Ecology and Conservation, Federal University of Sergipe, São Cristóvão, Sergipe, Brazil
- National Institute of Science and Technology Ecology, Evolution and Conservation of Biodiversity (INCT-EECBio), Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil
| | | | - Sidney F Gouveia
- National Institute of Science and Technology Ecology, Evolution and Conservation of Biodiversity (INCT-EECBio), Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil
- Department of Ecology, Federal University of Sergipe, São Cristóvão, Sergipe, Brazil
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4
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Puente-Sánchez F, Pascual-García A, Bastolla U, Pedrós-Alió C, Tamames J. Cross-biome microbial networks reveal functional redundancy and suggest genome reduction through functional complementarity. Commun Biol 2024; 7:1046. [PMID: 39181977 PMCID: PMC11344793 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-024-06616-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2023] [Accepted: 07/23/2024] [Indexed: 08/27/2024] Open
Abstract
The structure of microbial communities arises from a multitude of factors, including the interactions of microorganisms with each other and with the environment. In this work, we sought to disentangle those drivers by performing a cross-study, cross-biome meta-analysis of microbial occurrence data in more than 5000 samples, applying a novel network clustering algorithm aimed to capture conditional taxa co-occurrences. We then examined the phylogenetic and functional composition of the resulting clusters, and searched for global patterns of assembly both at the community level and in the presence/absence of individual metabolic pathways.Our analysis highlighted the prevalence of functional redundancy in microbial communities, particularly between taxa that co-occur in more than one environment, pointing to a relationship between functional redundancy and environmental adaptation. In spite of this, certain pathways were observed in fewer taxa than expected by chance, suggesting the presence of auxotrophy, and presumably cooperation among community members. This hypothetical cooperation may play a role in genome reduction, since we observed a negative relationship between the size of bacterial genomes and the size of the community they belong to.Overall, our results suggest the microbial community assembly is driven by universal principles that operate consistently across different biomes and taxonomic groups.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fernando Puente-Sánchez
- Systems Biology Department, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CSIC), C/ Darwin 3, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain.
- Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Lennart Hjelms väg 9, 756 51, Uppsala, Sweden.
| | - Alberto Pascual-García
- Systems Biology Department, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CSIC), C/ Darwin 3, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Ugo Bastolla
- Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - CSIC), C/ Nicolás Cabrera 1, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Carlos Pedrós-Alió
- Systems Biology Department, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CSIC), C/ Darwin 3, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Javier Tamames
- Systems Biology Department, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CSIC), C/ Darwin 3, Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049, Madrid, Spain
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Piontek J, Hassenrück C, Zäncker B, Jürgens K. Environmental control and metabolic strategies of organic-matter-responsive bacterioplankton in the Weddell Sea (Antarctica). Environ Microbiol 2024; 26:e16675. [PMID: 39022885 DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.16675] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/06/2024] [Accepted: 06/29/2024] [Indexed: 07/20/2024]
Abstract
Heterotrophic microbial communities play a significant role in driving carbon fluxes in marine ecosystems. Despite their importance, these communities remain understudied in remote polar oceans, which are known for their substantial contribution to the biological drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Our research focused on understanding the environmental factors and genetic makeup of key bacterial players involved in carbon remineralization in the Weddell Sea, including its coastal polynyas. Our experiments demonstrated that the combination of labile organic matter supply and temperature increase synergistically boosted bacterial growth. This suggests that, besides low seawater temperature, carbon limitation also hinders heterotrophic bacterial activity. Through the analysis of metagenome-assembled genomes, we discovered distinct genomic adaptation strategies in Bacteroidia and Gammaproteobacteria, both of which respond to organic matter. Both natural phytoplankton blooms and experimental addition of organic matter favoured Bacteroidia, which possess a large number of gene copies and a wide range of functional membrane transporters, glycoside hydrolases, and aminopeptidases. In contrast, the genomes of organic-matter-responsive Gammaproteobacteria were characterized by high densities of transcriptional regulators and transporters. Our findings suggest that bacterioplankton in the Weddell Sea, which respond to organic matter, employ metabolic strategies similar to those of their counterparts in temperate oceans. These strategies enable efficient growth at extremely low seawater temperatures, provided that organic carbon limitation is alleviated.
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Rodriguez CI, Isobe K, Martiny JBH. Short-term dietary fiber interventions produce consistent gut microbiome responses across studies. mSystems 2024; 9:e0013324. [PMID: 38742890 PMCID: PMC11237734 DOI: 10.1128/msystems.00133-24] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/29/2024] [Accepted: 04/15/2024] [Indexed: 05/16/2024] Open
Abstract
The composition of the human gut microbiome varies tremendously among individuals, making the effects of dietary or treatment interventions difficult to detect and characterize. The consumption of fiber is important for gut health, yet the specific effects of increased fiber intake on the gut microbiome vary across studies. The variation in study outcomes might be due to inter-individual (or inter-population) variation or to the details of the interventions including the types of fiber, length of study, size of cohort, and molecular approaches. Thus, to identify generally (on average) consistent fiber-induced responses in the gut microbiome of healthy individuals, we re-analyzed 16S rRNA sequencing data from 21 dietary fiber interventions from 12 human studies, which included 2,564 fecal samples from 538 subjects across all interventions. Short-term increases in dietary fiber consumption resulted in highly consistent gut bacterial community responses across studies. Increased fiber consumption explained an average of 1.5% of compositional variation (vs 82% of variation attributed to the individual), reduced alpha-diversity, and resulted in phylogenetically conserved responses in relative abundances among bacterial taxa. Additionally, we identified bacterial clades, at approximately the genus level, that were highly consistent in their response (on average, increasing or decreasing in their relative abundance) to dietary fiber interventions across the studies. IMPORTANCE Our study is an example of the power of synthesizing and reanalyzing 16S rRNA microbiome data from many intervention studies. Despite high inter-individual variation of the composition of the human gut microbiome, dietary fiber interventions cause a consistent response both in the degree of change and the particular taxa that respond to increased fiber.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cynthia I. Rodriguez
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
| | - Kazuo Isobe
- Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Jennifer B. H. Martiny
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
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Abraham JO, Lin B, Miller AE, Henry LP, Demmel MY, Warungu R, Mwangi M, Lobura PM, Pallares LF, Ayroles JF, Pringle RM, Rubenstein DI. Determinants of microbiome composition: Insights from free-ranging hybrid zebras (Equus quagga × grevyi). Mol Ecol 2024; 33:e17370. [PMID: 38682799 DOI: 10.1111/mec.17370] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/08/2023] [Revised: 04/12/2024] [Accepted: 04/17/2024] [Indexed: 05/01/2024]
Abstract
The composition of mammalian gut microbiomes is highly conserved within species, yet the mechanisms by which microbiome composition is transmitted and maintained within lineages of wild animals remain unclear. Mutually compatible hypotheses exist, including that microbiome fidelity results from inherited dietary habits, shared environmental exposure, morphophysiological filtering and/or maternal effects. Interspecific hybrids are a promising system in which to interrogate the determinants of microbiome composition because hybrids can decouple traits and processes that are otherwise co-inherited in their parent species. We used a population of free-living hybrid zebras (Equus quagga × grevyi) in Kenya to evaluate the roles of these four mechanisms in regulating microbiome composition. We analysed faecal DNA for both the trnL-P6 and the 16S rRNA V4 region to characterize the diets and microbiomes of the hybrid zebra and of their parent species, plains zebra (E. quagga) and Grevy's zebra (E. grevyi). We found that both diet and microbiome composition clustered by species, and that hybrid diets and microbiomes were largely nested within those of the maternal species, plains zebra. Hybrid microbiomes were less variable than those of either parent species where they co-occurred. Diet and microbiome composition were strongly correlated, although the strength of this correlation varied between species. These patterns are most consistent with the maternal-effects hypothesis, somewhat consistent with the diet hypothesis, and largely inconsistent with the environmental-sourcing and morphophysiological-filtering hypotheses. Maternal transmittance likely operates in conjunction with inherited feeding habits to conserve microbiome composition within species.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joel O Abraham
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
| | - Bing Lin
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
| | - Audrey E Miller
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
| | - Lucas P Henry
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Department of Biology, New York University, New York City, New York, USA
| | - Margaret Y Demmel
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, USA
| | | | | | | | - Luisa F Pallares
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Friedrich Miescher Laboratory, Max Planck Society, Tübingen, Germany
| | - Julien F Ayroles
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
| | - Robert M Pringle
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
| | - Daniel I Rubenstein
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- Mpala Research Conservancy, Laikipia County, Kenya
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8
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Jing M, Yang W, Rao L, Chen J, Ding X, Zhou Y, Zhang Q, Lu K, Zhu J. Mechanisms of microbial coexistence in a patchy ecosystem: Differences in ecological niche overlap and species fitness between rhythmic and non-rhythmic species. WATER RESEARCH 2024; 256:121626. [PMID: 38642534 DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2024.121626] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/24/2023] [Revised: 03/28/2024] [Accepted: 04/15/2024] [Indexed: 04/22/2024]
Abstract
Resource patchiness caused by external events breaks the continuity and homogeneity of resource distribution in the original ecosystem. For local organisms, this leads to drastic changes in the availability of resources, breaks down the co-existence of species, and reshuffles the local ecosystem. West Lake is a freshwater lake with resource patchiness caused by multiple exogenous disturbances that has strong environmental heterogeneity that prevents clear observation of seasonal changes in the microbial communities. Despite this, the emergence of rhythmic species in response to irregular changes in the environment has been helpful for observing microbial communities dynamics in patchy ecosystems. We investigated the ecological mechanisms of seasonal changes in microbial communities in West Lake by screening rhythmic species based on the ecological niche and modern coexistence theories. The results showed that rhythmic species were the dominant factors in microbial community changes and the effects of most environmental factors on the microbial community were indirectly realised through the rhythmic species. Random forest analyses showed that seasonal changes in the microbial community were similarly predicted by the rhythmic species. In addition, we incorporated species interactions and community phylogenetic patterns into stepwise multiple regression analyses, the results of which indicate that ecological niches and species fitness may drive the coexistence of these subcommunities. Thus, this study extends our understanding of seasonal changes in microbial communities and provides new ways for observing seasonal changes in microbial communities, especially in ecosystems with resource patches. Our study also show that combining community phylogenies with co-occurrence networks based on ecological niches and modern coexistence theory can further help us understand the ecological mechanisms of interspecies coexistence.
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Affiliation(s)
- MingFei Jing
- School of Marine Science, Ningbo University, No.169 Qixingnan Road, Beilun District, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315800, China
| | - Wen Yang
- School of Marine Science, Ningbo University, No.169 Qixingnan Road, Beilun District, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315800, China
| | - Lihua Rao
- Division of Hangzhou West Lake Aquatic Area Management, Hangzhou 310002, China
| | - Jun Chen
- Division of Hangzhou West Lake Aquatic Area Management, Hangzhou 310002, China
| | - Xiuying Ding
- Division of Hangzhou West Lake Aquatic Area Management, Hangzhou 310002, China
| | - Yinying Zhou
- Division of Hangzhou West Lake Aquatic Area Management, Hangzhou 310002, China
| | - Quanxiang Zhang
- School of Marine Science, Ningbo University, No.169 Qixingnan Road, Beilun District, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315800, China
| | - Kaihong Lu
- School of Marine Science, Ningbo University, No.169 Qixingnan Road, Beilun District, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315800, China
| | - Jinyong Zhu
- School of Marine Science, Ningbo University, No.169 Qixingnan Road, Beilun District, Ningbo, Zhejiang 315800, China.
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Mirzaei S, Tefagh M. GEM-based computational modeling for exploring metabolic interactions in a microbial community. PLoS Comput Biol 2024; 20:e1012233. [PMID: 38900842 PMCID: PMC11218945 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012233] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2023] [Revised: 07/02/2024] [Accepted: 06/03/2024] [Indexed: 06/22/2024] Open
Abstract
Microbial communities play fundamental roles in every complex ecosystem, such as soil, sea and the human body. The stability and diversity of the microbial community depend precisely on the composition of the microbiota. Any change in the composition of these communities affects microbial functions. An important goal of studying the interactions between species is to understand the behavior of microbes and their responses to perturbations. These interactions among species are mediated by the exchange of metabolites within microbial communities. We developed a computational model for the microbial community that has a separate compartment for exchanging metabolites. This model can predict possible metabolites that cause competition, commensalism, and mutual interactions between species within a microbial community. Our constraint-based community metabolic modeling approach provides insights to elucidate the pattern of metabolic interactions for each common metabolite between two microbes. To validate our approach, we used a toy model and a syntrophic co-culture of Desulfovibrio vulgaris and Methanococcus maripaludis, as well as another in co-culture between Geobacter sulfurreducens and Rhodoferax ferrireducens. For a more general evaluation, we applied our algorithm to the honeybee gut microbiome, composed of seven species, and the epiphyte strain Pantoea eucalypti 299R. The epiphyte strain Pe299R has been previously studied and cultured with six different phyllosphere bacteria. Our algorithm successfully predicts metabolites, which imply mutualistic, competitive, or commensal interactions. In contrast to OptCom, MRO, and MICOM algorithms, our COMMA algorithm shows that the potential for competitive interactions between an epiphytic species and Pe299R is not significant. These results are consistent with the experimental measurements of population density and reproductive success of the Pe299R strain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Soraya Mirzaei
- Department of Mathematical Sciences, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mojtaba Tefagh
- Department of Mathematical Sciences, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
- Center for Information Systems & Data Science, Institute for Convergence Science & Technology, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
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10
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Sorouri B, Scales NC, Gaut BS, Allison SD. Sphingomonas clade and functional distribution with simulated climate change. Microbiol Spectr 2024; 12:e0023624. [PMID: 38572990 PMCID: PMC11064482 DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.00236-24] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2024] [Accepted: 03/15/2024] [Indexed: 04/05/2024] Open
Abstract
Microbes are essential for the functioning of all ecosystems, and as global warming and anthropogenic pollution threaten ecosystems, it is critical to understand how microbes respond to these changes. We investigated the climate response of Sphingomonas, a widespread gram-negative bacterial genus, during an 18-month microbial community reciprocal transplant experiment across a Southern California climate gradient. We hypothesized that after 18 months, the transplanted Sphingomonas clade and functional composition would correspond with site conditions and reflect the Sphingomonas composition of native communities. We extracted Sphingomonas sequences from metagenomic data across the gradient and assessed their clade and functional composition. Representatives of at least 12 major Sphingomonas clades were found at varying relative abundances along the climate gradient, and transplanted Sphingomonas clade composition shifted after 18 months. Site had a significant effect (PERMANOVA; P < 0.001) on the distribution of both Sphingomonas functional (R2 = 0.465) and clade composition (R2 = 0.400), suggesting that Sphingomonas composition depends on climate parameters. Additionally, for both Sphingomonas clade and functional composition, ordinations revealed that the transplanted communities shifted closer to the native Sphingomonas composition of the grassland site compared with the site they were transplanted into. Overall, our results indicate that climate and substrate collectively determine Sphingomonas clade and functional composition.IMPORTANCESphingomonas is the most abundant gram-negative bacterial genus in litter-degrading microbial communities of desert, grassland, shrubland, and forest ecosystems in Southern California. We aimed to determine whether Sphingomonas responds to climate change in the same way as gram-positive bacteria and whole bacterial communities in these ecosystems. Within Sphingomonas, both clade composition and functional genes shifted in response to climate and litter chemistry, supporting the idea that bacteria respond similarly to climate at different scales of genetic variation. This understanding of how microbes respond to perturbation across scales may aid in future predictions of microbial responses to climate change.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bahareh Sorouri
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
- Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
| | - Nicholas C. Scales
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
| | - Brandon S. Gaut
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
| | - Steven D. Allison
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
- Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California, USA
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11
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Zhang Y, Deng Y, Wang C, Li S, Lau FTK, Zhou J, Zhang T. Effects of operational parameters on bacterial communities in Hong Kong and global wastewater treatment plants. mSystems 2024; 9:e0133323. [PMID: 38411061 PMCID: PMC10949511 DOI: 10.1128/msystems.01333-23] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/13/2023] [Accepted: 01/26/2024] [Indexed: 02/28/2024] Open
Abstract
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are indispensable biotechnology facilities for modern cities and play an essential role in modern urban infrastructure by employing microorganisms to remove pollutants in wastewater, thus protecting public health and the environment. This study conducted a 13-month bacterial community survey of six full-scale WWTPs in Hong Kong with samples of influent, activated sludge (AS), and effluent to explore their synchronism and asynchronism of bacterial community. Besides, we compared AS results of six Hong Kong WWTPs with data from 1,186 AS amplicon data in 269 global WWTPs and a 9-year metagenomic sequencing survey of a Hong Kong WWTP. Our results showed the compositions of bacterial communities varied and the bacterial community structure of AS had obvious differences across Hong Kong WWTPs. The co-occurrence analysis identified 40 pairs of relationships that existed among Hong Kong WWTPs to show solid associations between two species and stochastic processes took large proportions for the bacterial community assembly of six WWTPs. The abundance and distribution of the functional bacteria in worldwide and Hong Kong WWTPs were examined and compared, and we found that ammonia-oxidizing bacteria had more diversity than nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. Besides, Hong Kong WWTPs could make great contributions to the genome mining of microbial dark matter in the global "wanted list." Operational parameters had important effects on OTUs' abundance, such as the temperature to the genera of Tetrasphaera, Gordonia and Nitrospira. All these results obtained from this study can deepen our understanding of the microbial ecology in WWTPs and provide foundations for further studies. IMPORTANCE Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are an indispensable component of modern cities, as they can remove pollutants in wastewater to prevent anthropogenic activities. Activated sludge (AS) is a fundamental wastewater treatment process and it harbors a highly complex microbial community that forms the main components and contains functional groups. Unveiling "who is there" is a long-term goal of the research on AS microbiology. High-throughput sequencing provides insights into the inventory diversity of microbial communities to an unprecedented level of detail. At present, the analysis of communities in WWTPs usually comes from a specific WWTP and lacks comparisons and verification among different WWTPs. The wide-scale and long-term sampling project and research in this study could help us evaluate the AS community more accurately to find the similarities and different results for different WWTPs in Hong Kong and other regions of the world.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yulin Zhang
- Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Lab, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | - Yu Deng
- Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Lab, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | - Chunxiao Wang
- Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Lab, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | - Shuxian Li
- Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Lab, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | - Frankie T. K. Lau
- Drainage Services Department, The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, Wanchai, Hong Kong, China
| | - Jizhong Zhou
- Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, and School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
| | - Tong Zhang
- Environmental Microbiome Engineering and Biotechnology Lab, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
- Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China
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12
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Kimotho RN, Maina S. Unraveling plant-microbe interactions: can integrated omics approaches offer concrete answers? JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY 2024; 75:1289-1313. [PMID: 37950741 PMCID: PMC10901211 DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erad448] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2023] [Accepted: 11/08/2023] [Indexed: 11/13/2023]
Abstract
Advances in high throughput omics techniques provide avenues to decipher plant microbiomes. However, there is limited information on how integrated informatics can help provide deeper insights into plant-microbe interactions in a concerted way. Integrating multi-omics datasets can transform our understanding of the plant microbiome from unspecified genetic influences on interacting species to specific gene-by-gene interactions. Here, we highlight recent progress and emerging strategies in crop microbiome omics research and review key aspects of how the integration of host and microbial omics-based datasets can be used to provide a comprehensive outline of complex crop-microbe interactions. We describe how these technological advances have helped unravel crucial plant and microbial genes and pathways that control beneficial, pathogenic, and commensal plant-microbe interactions. We identify crucial knowledge gaps and synthesize current limitations in our understanding of crop microbiome omics approaches. We highlight recent studies in which multi-omics-based approaches have led to improved models of crop microbial community structure and function. Finally, we recommend holistic approaches in integrating host and microbial omics datasets to achieve precision and efficiency in data analysis, which is crucial for biotic and abiotic stress control and in understanding the contribution of the microbiota in shaping plant fitness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Roy Njoroge Kimotho
- Hebei Key Laboratory of Soil Ecology, Key Laboratory of Agricultural Water Resources, Centre for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shijiazhuang 050021, China
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
| | - Solomon Maina
- Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Institute, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Menangle, New South Wales 2568, Australia
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13
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Riopelle JC, Shamsaddini A, Holbrook MG, Bohrnsen E, Zhang Y, Lovaglio J, Cordova K, Hanley P, Kendall LV, Bosio CM, Schountz T, Schwarz B, Munster VJ, Port JR. Sex differences and individual variability in the captive Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) intestinal microbiome and metabolome. Sci Rep 2024; 14:3381. [PMID: 38336916 PMCID: PMC10858165 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-53645-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/09/2023] [Accepted: 02/03/2024] [Indexed: 02/12/2024] Open
Abstract
The intestinal microbiome plays an important role in mammalian health, disease, and immune function. In light of this function, recent studies have aimed to characterize the microbiomes of various bat species, which are noteworthy for their roles as reservoir hosts for several viruses known to be highly pathogenic in other mammals. Despite ongoing bat microbiome research, its role in immune function and disease, especially the effects of changes in the microbiome on host health, remains nebulous. Here, we describe a novel methodology to investigate the intestinal microbiome of captive Jamaican fruit bats (Artibeus jamaicensis). We observed a high degree of individual variation in addition to sex- and cohort-linked differences. The intestinal microbiome was correlated with intestinal metabolite composition, possibly contributing to differences in immune status. This work provides a basis for future infection and field studies to examine in detail the role of the intestinal microbiome in antiviral immunity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jade C Riopelle
- Laboratory of Virology, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Amirhossein Shamsaddini
- Research Technologies Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Myndi G Holbrook
- Research Technologies Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Eric Bohrnsen
- Research Technologies Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Yue Zhang
- Integrated Data Sciences Section, Research Technologies Branch, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Jamie Lovaglio
- Rocky Mountain Veterinary Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Kathleen Cordova
- Rocky Mountain Veterinary Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Patrick Hanley
- Rocky Mountain Veterinary Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Lon V Kendall
- Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
| | - Catharine M Bosio
- Laboratory of Bacteriology, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Tony Schountz
- Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
| | - Benjamin Schwarz
- Research Technologies Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Vincent J Munster
- Laboratory of Virology, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA
| | - Julia R Port
- Laboratory of Virology, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, MT, USA.
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14
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Richards SC, King WL, Sutherland JL, Bell TH. Leveraging aquatic-terrestrial interfaces to capture putative habitat generalists. FEMS Microbiol Lett 2024; 371:fnae025. [PMID: 38553956 DOI: 10.1093/femsle/fnae025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/20/2023] [Revised: 02/03/2024] [Accepted: 03/28/2024] [Indexed: 04/21/2024] Open
Abstract
Habitat type is a strong determinant of microbial composition. Habitat interfaces, such as the boundary between aquatic and terrestrial systems, present unique combinations of abiotic factors for microorganisms to contend with. Aside from the spillover of certain harmful microorganisms from agricultural soils into water (e.g. fecal coliform bacteria), we know little about the extent of soil-water habitat switching across microbial taxa. In this study, we developed a proof-of-concept system to facilitate the capture of putatively generalist microorganisms that can colonize and persist in both soil and river water. We aimed to examine the phylogenetic breadth of putative habitat switchers and how this varies across different source environments. Microbial composition was primarily driven by recipient environment type, with the strongest phylogenetic signal seen at the order level for river water colonizers. We also identified more microorganisms colonizing river water when soil was collected from a habitat interface (i.e. soil at the side of an intermittently flooded river, compared to soil collected further from water sources), suggesting that environmental interfaces could be important reservoirs of microbial habitat generalists. Continued development of experimental systems that actively capture microorganisms that thrive in divergent habitats could serve as a powerful tool for identifying and assessing the ecological distribution of microbial generalists.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah C Richards
- Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
- Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
- Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
- International Agriculture and Development Graduate Program, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
| | - William L King
- Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom
| | - Jeremy L Sutherland
- Department of Plant Science, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
| | - Terrence H Bell
- Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
- Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
- International Agriculture and Development Graduate Program, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, United States
- Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, M1C1A4, Canada
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15
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Alvarez-Aponte ZI, Govindaraju AM, Hallberg ZF, Nicolas AM, Green MA, Mok KC, Fonseca-García C, Coleman-Derr D, Brodie EL, Carlson HK, Taga ME. Phylogenetic distribution and experimental characterization of corrinoid production and dependence in soil bacterial isolates. THE ISME JOURNAL 2024; 18:wrae068. [PMID: 38648288 PMCID: PMC11287214 DOI: 10.1093/ismejo/wrae068] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/22/2023] [Revised: 03/15/2024] [Accepted: 04/19/2024] [Indexed: 04/25/2024]
Abstract
Soil microbial communities impact carbon sequestration and release, biogeochemical cycling, and agricultural yields. These global effects rely on metabolic interactions that modulate community composition and function. However, the physicochemical and taxonomic complexity of soil and the scarcity of available isolates for phenotypic testing are significant barriers to studying soil microbial interactions. Corrinoids-the vitamin B12 family of cofactors-are critical for microbial metabolism, yet they are synthesized by only a subset of microbiome members. Here, we evaluated corrinoid production and dependence in soil bacteria as a model to investigate the ecological roles of microorganisms involved in metabolic interactions. We isolated and characterized a taxonomically diverse collection of 161 soil bacteria from a single study site. Most corrinoid-dependent bacteria in the collection prefer B12 over other corrinoids, while all tested producers synthesize B12, indicating metabolic compatibility between producers and dependents in the collection. Furthermore, a subset of producers release B12 at levels sufficient to support dependent isolates in laboratory culture at estimated ratios of up to 1000 dependents per producer. Within our isolate collection, we did not find strong phylogenetic patterns in corrinoid production or dependence. Upon investigating trends in the phylogenetic dispersion of corrinoid metabolism categories across sequenced bacteria from various environments, we found that these traits are conserved in 47 out of 85 genera. Together, these phenotypic and genomic results provide evidence for corrinoid-based metabolic interactions among bacteria and provide a framework for the study of nutrient-sharing ecological interactions in microbial communities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zoila I Alvarez-Aponte
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Alekhya M Govindaraju
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Zachary F Hallberg
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Alexa M Nicolas
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Myka A Green
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Kenny C Mok
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Citlali Fonseca-García
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
- Plant Gene Expression Center, USDA-ARS, Albany, CA 94710, United States
| | - Devin Coleman-Derr
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
- Plant Gene Expression Center, USDA-ARS, Albany, CA 94710, United States
| | - Eoin L Brodie
- Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
- Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Hans K Carlson
- Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
| | - Michiko E Taga
- Department of Plant & Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
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16
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Shen L, Liu Y, Chen L, Lei T, Ren P, Ji M, Song W, Lin H, Su W, Wang S, Rooman M, Pucci F. Genomic basis of environmental adaptation in the widespread poly-extremophilic Exiguobacterium group. THE ISME JOURNAL 2024; 18:wrad020. [PMID: 38365240 PMCID: PMC10837837 DOI: 10.1093/ismejo/wrad020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/19/2023] [Revised: 12/04/2023] [Accepted: 12/05/2023] [Indexed: 02/18/2024]
Abstract
Delineating cohesive ecological units and determining the genetic basis for their environmental adaptation are among the most important objectives in microbiology. In the last decade, many studies have been devoted to characterizing the genetic diversity in microbial populations to address these issues. However, the impact of extreme environmental conditions, such as temperature and salinity, on microbial ecology and evolution remains unclear so far. In order to better understand the mechanisms of adaptation, we studied the (pan)genome of Exiguobacterium, a poly-extremophile bacterium able to grow in a wide range of environments, from permafrost to hot springs. To have the genome for all known Exiguobacterium type strains, we first sequenced those that were not yet available. Using a reverse-ecology approach, we showed how the integration of phylogenomic information, genomic features, gene and pathway enrichment data, regulatory element analyses, protein amino acid composition, and protein structure analyses of the entire Exiguobacterium pangenome allows to sharply delineate ecological units consisting of mesophilic, psychrophilic, halophilic-mesophilic, and halophilic-thermophilic ecotypes. This in-depth study clarified the genetic basis of the defined ecotypes and identified some key mechanisms driving the environmental adaptation to extreme environments. Our study points the way to organizing the vast microbial diversity into meaningful ecologically units, which, in turn, provides insight into how microbial communities adapt and respond to different environmental conditions in a changing world.
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Affiliation(s)
- Liang Shen
- College of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China
- Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Molecular Enzymology and Mechanism of Major Diseases, and Anhui Provincial Engineering Research Centre for Molecular Detection and Diagnostics, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China
| | - Yongqin Liu
- Center for the Pan-Third Pole Environment, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
| | - Liangzhong Chen
- College of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China
| | - Tingting Lei
- College of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China
| | - Ping Ren
- College of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China
| | - Mukan Ji
- Center for the Pan-Third Pole Environment, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China
| | - Weizhi Song
- Centre for Marine Bio-Innovation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Hao Lin
- School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
| | - Wei Su
- School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
| | - Sheng Wang
- Shanghai Zelixir Biotech Company Ltd., Shanghai 200030, China
| | - Marianne Rooman
- Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels 1050, Belgium
- Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels, Brussels 1050, Belgium
| | - Fabrizio Pucci
- Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels 1050, Belgium
- Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics in Brussels, Brussels 1050, Belgium
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17
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Pold G, Bonilla-Rosso G, Saghaï A, Strous M, Jones CM, Hallin S. Phylogenetics and environmental distribution of nitric oxide-forming nitrite reductases reveal their distinct functional and ecological roles. ISME COMMUNICATIONS 2024; 4:ycae020. [PMID: 38584645 PMCID: PMC10999283 DOI: 10.1093/ismeco/ycae020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2023] [Revised: 01/16/2024] [Accepted: 01/29/2024] [Indexed: 04/09/2024]
Abstract
The two evolutionarily unrelated nitric oxide-producing nitrite reductases, NirK and NirS, are best known for their redundant role in denitrification. They are also often found in organisms that do not perform denitrification. To assess the functional roles of the two enzymes and to address the sequence and structural variation within each, we reconstructed robust phylogenies of both proteins with sequences recovered from 6973 isolate and metagenome-assembled genomes and identified 32 well-supported clades of structurally distinct protein lineages. We then inferred the potential niche of each clade by considering other functional genes of the organisms carrying them as well as the relative abundances of each nir gene in 4082 environmental metagenomes across diverse aquatic, terrestrial, host-associated, and engineered biomes. We demonstrate that Nir phylogenies recapitulate ecology distinctly from the corresponding organismal phylogeny. While some clades of the nitrite reductase were equally prevalent across biomes, others had more restricted ranges. Nitrifiers make up a sizeable proportion of the nitrite-reducing community, especially for NirK in marine waters and dry soils. Furthermore, the two reductases showed distinct associations with genes involved in oxidizing and reducing other compounds, indicating that the NirS and NirK activities may be linked to different elemental cycles. Accordingly, the relative abundance and diversity of NirS versus NirK vary between biomes. Our results show the divergent ecological roles NirK and NirS-encoding organisms may play in the environment and provide a phylogenetic framework to distinguish the traits associated with organisms encoding the different lineages of nitrite reductases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Grace Pold
- Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Germán Bonilla-Rosso
- Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Aurélien Saghaï
- Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Marc Strous
- Department of Earth, Energy, and Environment, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4, Canada
| | - Christopher M Jones
- Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Sara Hallin
- Department of Forest Mycology and Plant Pathology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
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18
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Khan T, Song W, Nappi J, Marzinelli EM, Egan S, Thomas T. Functional guilds and drivers of diversity in seaweed-associated bacteria. FEMS MICROBES 2023; 5:xtad023. [PMID: 38213395 PMCID: PMC10781435 DOI: 10.1093/femsmc/xtad023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/10/2023] [Revised: 11/21/2023] [Accepted: 12/12/2023] [Indexed: 01/13/2024] Open
Abstract
Comparisons of functional and taxonomic profiles from bacterial communities in different habitats have suggested the existence of functional guilds composed of taxonomically or phylogenetically distinct members. Such guild membership is, however, rarely defined and the factors that drive functional diversity in bacteria remain poorly understood. We used seaweed-associated bacteria as a model to shed light on these important aspects of community ecology. Using a large dataset of over 1300 metagenome-assembled genomes from 13 seaweed species we found substantial overlap in the functionality of bacteria coming from distinct taxa, thus supporting the existence of functional guilds. This functional equivalence between different taxa was particularly pronounced when only functions involved in carbohydrate degradation were considered. We further found that bacterial taxonomy is the dominant driver of functional differences between bacteria and that seaweed species or seaweed type (i.e. brown, red and green) had relatively stronger impacts on genome functionality for carbohydrate-degradation functions when compared to all other cellular functions. This study provides new insight into the factors underpinning the functional diversity of bacteria and contributes to our understanding how community function is generated from individual members.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tahsin Khan
- Centre for Marine Science and Innovation & School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Weizhi Song
- Centre for Marine Science and Innovation & School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Jadranka Nappi
- Centre for Marine Science and Innovation & School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Ezequiel M Marzinelli
- School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
| | - Suhelen Egan
- Centre for Marine Science and Innovation & School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
| | - Torsten Thomas
- Centre for Marine Science and Innovation & School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
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19
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Winter SE, Bäumler AJ. Gut dysbiosis: Ecological causes and causative effects on human disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2316579120. [PMID: 38048456 PMCID: PMC10722970 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2316579120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2023] [Accepted: 11/02/2023] [Indexed: 12/06/2023] Open
Abstract
The gut microbiota plays a role in many human diseases, but high-throughput sequence analysis does not provide a straightforward path for defining healthy microbial communities. Therefore, understanding mechanisms that drive compositional changes during disease (gut dysbiosis) continues to be a central goal in microbiome research. Insights from the microbial pathogenesis field show that an ecological cause for gut dysbiosis is an increased availability of host-derived respiratory electron acceptors, which are dominant drivers of microbial community composition. Similar changes in the host environment also drive gut dysbiosis in several chronic human illnesses, and a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms informs approaches to causatively link compositional changes in the gut microbiota to an exacerbation of symptoms. The emerging picture suggests that homeostasis is maintained by host functions that control the availability of resources governing microbial growth. Defining dysbiosis as a weakening of these host functions directs attention to the underlying cause and identifies potential targets for therapeutic intervention.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian E. Winter
- Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of California, Davis, CA95616
- Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, Davis, CA95616
| | - Andreas J. Bäumler
- Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of California, Davis, CA95616
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20
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Li Z, Selim A, Kuehn S. Statistical prediction of microbial metabolic traits from genomes. PLoS Comput Biol 2023; 19:e1011705. [PMID: 38113208 PMCID: PMC10729968 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011705] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2023] [Accepted: 11/22/2023] [Indexed: 12/21/2023] Open
Abstract
The metabolic activity of microbial communities is central to their role in biogeochemical cycles, human health, and biotechnology. Despite the abundance of sequencing data characterizing these consortia, it remains a serious challenge to predict microbial metabolic traits from sequencing data alone. Here we culture 96 bacterial isolates individually and assay their ability to grow on 10 distinct compounds as a sole carbon source. Using these data as well as two existing datasets, we show that statistical approaches can accurately predict bacterial carbon utilization traits from genomes. First, we show that classifiers trained on gene content can accurately predict bacterial carbon utilization phenotypes by encoding phylogenetic information. These models substantially outperform predictions made by constraint-based metabolic models automatically constructed from genomes. This result solidifies our current knowledge about the strong connection between phylogeny and metabolic traits. However, phylogeny-based predictions fail to predict traits for taxa that are phylogenetically distant from any strains in the training set. To overcome this we train improved models on gene presence/absence to predict carbon utilization traits from gene content. We show that models that predict carbon utilization traits from gene presence/absence can generalize to taxa that are phylogenetically distant from the training set either by exploiting biochemical information for feature selection or by having sufficiently large datasets. In the latter case, we provide evidence that a statistical approach can identify putatively mechanistic genes involved in metabolic traits. Our study demonstrates the potential power for predicting microbial phenotypes from genotypes using statistical approaches.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zeqian Li
- Center for the Physics of Evolving Systems, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
- Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
- Department of Physics, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
| | - Ahmed Selim
- Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
| | - Seppe Kuehn
- Center for the Physics of Evolving Systems, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
- Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
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21
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Oliver A, Kay M, Lemay DG. TaxaHFE: a machine learning approach to collapse microbiome datasets using taxonomic structure. BIOINFORMATICS ADVANCES 2023; 3:vbad165. [PMID: 38046097 PMCID: PMC10689668 DOI: 10.1093/bioadv/vbad165] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2023] [Revised: 09/28/2023] [Accepted: 11/27/2023] [Indexed: 12/05/2023]
Abstract
Motivation Biologists increasingly turn to machine learning models not just to predict, but to explain. Feature reduction is a common approach to improve both the performance and interpretability of models. However, some biological datasets, such as microbiome data, are inherently organized in a taxonomy, but these hierarchical relationships are not leveraged during feature reduction. We sought to design a feature engineering algorithm to exploit relationships in hierarchically organized biological data. Results We designed an algorithm, called TaxaHFE, to collapse information-poor features into their higher taxonomic levels. We applied TaxaHFE to six previously published datasets and found, on average, a 90% reduction in the number of features (SD = 5.1%) compared to using the most complete taxonomy. Using machine learning to compare the most resolved taxonomic level (i.e. species) against TaxaHFE-preprocessed features, models based on TaxaHFE features achieved an average increase of 3.47% in receiver operator curve area under the curve. Compared to other hierarchical feature engineering implementations, TaxaHFE introduces the novel ability to consider both categorical and continuous response variables to inform the feature set collapse. Importantly, we find TaxaHFE's ability to reduce hierarchically organized features to a more information-rich subset increases the interpretability of models. Availability and implementation TaxaHFE is available as a Docker image and as R code at https://github.com/aoliver44/taxaHFE.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Oliver
- USDA-ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center, Davis, CA 95616, United States
| | - Matthew Kay
- Independent Researcher, Washington, DC 20002, United States
| | - Danielle G Lemay
- USDA-ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center, Davis, CA 95616, United States
- Department of Nutrition, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, United States
- Genome Center, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616, United States
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22
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Tytgat B, Verleyen E, Sweetlove M, Van den Berge K, Pinseel E, Hodgson DA, Chown SL, Sabbe K, Wilmotte A, Willems A, Vyverman W. Polar lake microbiomes have distinct evolutionary histories. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2023; 9:eade7130. [PMID: 37976353 PMCID: PMC10656066 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ade7130] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/30/2022] [Accepted: 10/19/2023] [Indexed: 11/19/2023]
Abstract
Toward the poles, life on land is increasingly dominated by microorganisms, yet the evolutionary origin of polar microbiomes remains poorly understood. Here, we use metabarcoding of Arctic, sub-Antarctic, and Antarctic lacustrine benthic microbial communities to test the hypothesis that high-latitude microbiomes are recruited from a globally dispersing species pool through environmental selection. We demonstrate that taxonomic overlap between the regions is limited within most phyla, even at higher-order taxonomic levels, with unique deep-branching phylogenetic clades being present in each region. We show that local and regional taxon richness and net diversification rate of regionally restricted taxa differ substantially between polar regions in both microeukaryotic and bacterial biota. This suggests that long-term evolutionary divergence resulting from low interhemispheric dispersal and diversification in isolation has been a prominent process shaping present-day polar lake microbiomes. Our findings illuminate the distinctive biogeography of polar lake ecosystems and underscore that conservation efforts should include their unique microbiota.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bjorn Tytgat
- Laboratory of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
| | - Elie Verleyen
- Laboratory of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
| | - Maxime Sweetlove
- Laboratory of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
| | - Koen Van den Berge
- Department of Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
| | - Eveline Pinseel
- Laboratory of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
- Meise Botanic Garden, Meise, Belgium
| | - Dominic A. Hodgson
- British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Cambridge, UK
- Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham, UK
| | - Steven L. Chown
- Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
| | - Koen Sabbe
- Laboratory of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
| | - Annick Wilmotte
- InBio-Centre for Protein Engineering, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
| | - Anne Willems
- Laboratory of Microbiology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
| | | | - Wim Vyverman
- Laboratory of Protistology and Aquatic Ecology, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium
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23
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Lajoie G, Kembel SW. Data-driven identification of major axes of functional variation in bacteria. Environ Microbiol 2023; 25:2580-2591. [PMID: 37648438 DOI: 10.1111/1462-2920.16487] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2023] [Accepted: 07/26/2023] [Indexed: 09/01/2023]
Abstract
The discovery of major axes of correlated functional variation among species and habitats has revealed the fundamental trade-offs structuring both functional and taxonomic diversity in eukaryotes such as plants. Whether such functional axes exist in the bacterial realm and whether they could explain bacterial taxonomic turnover among ecosystems remains unknown. Here, we use a data-driven approach to leverage global genomic and metagenomic datasets to reveal the existence of major axes of functional variation explaining both evolutionary differentiation within Bacteria and their ecological sorting across diverse habitats. We show that metagenomic variation among bacterial communities from various ecosystems is structured along a few axes of correlated functional pathways. Similar clusters of traits explained phylogenetic trait variation among >16,000 bacterial genomes, suggesting that functional turnover among bacterial communities from distinct habitats does not only result from the differential filtering of similar functions among communities, but also from phylogenetic correlations among these functions. Concordantly, functional pathways associated with trait clusters that were most important for defining functional turnover among bacterial communities were also those that had the highest phylogenetic signal in the bacterial genomic phylogeny. This study overall underlines the important role of evolutionary history in shaping contemporary distributions of bacteria across ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Geneviève Lajoie
- Département des Sciences Biologiques, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Canada
| | - Steven W Kembel
- Département des Sciences Biologiques, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Canada
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24
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Deng T, He Z, Xu M, Dong M, Guo J, Sun G, Huang H. Species' functional traits and interactions drive nitrate-mediated sulfur-oxidizing community structure and functioning. mBio 2023; 14:e0156723. [PMID: 37702500 PMCID: PMC10653917 DOI: 10.1128/mbio.01567-23] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/22/2023] [Accepted: 07/18/2023] [Indexed: 09/14/2023] Open
Abstract
IMPORTANCE Understanding the processes and mechanisms governing microbial community assembly and their linkages to ecosystem functioning has long been a core issue in microbial ecology. An in-depth insight still requires combining with analyses of species' functional traits and microbial interactions. Our study showed how species' functional traits and interactions determined microbial community structure and functions by a well-controlled laboratory experiment with nitrate-mediated sulfur oxidation systems using high-throughput sequencing and culture-dependent technologies. The results provided solid evidences that species' functional traits and interactions were the intrinsic factors determining community structure and function. More importantly, our study established quantitative links between community structure and function based on species' functional traits and interactions, which would have important implications for the design and synthesis of microbiomes with expected functions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tongchu Deng
- State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Science, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Protection Microbiology and Regional Ecological Security, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
| | - Zhili He
- Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, China
| | - Meiying Xu
- State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Science, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Protection Microbiology and Regional Ecological Security, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
| | - Meijun Dong
- State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Science, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Protection Microbiology and Regional Ecological Security, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
| | - Jun Guo
- State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Science, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Protection Microbiology and Regional Ecological Security, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
| | - Guoping Sun
- State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Science, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Protection Microbiology and Regional Ecological Security, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
| | - Haobin Huang
- State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Institute of Microbiology, Guangdong Academy of Science, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Environmental Protection Microbiology and Regional Ecological Security, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
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25
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Talavera-Marcos S, Parras-Moltó M, Aguirre de Cárcer D. Leveraging phylogenetic signal to unravel microbiome function and assembly rules. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2023; 21:5165-5173. [PMID: 37920817 PMCID: PMC10618112 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2023.10.039] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2023] [Revised: 10/17/2023] [Accepted: 10/17/2023] [Indexed: 11/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Clarifying the general rules behind microbial community assembly will foster the development of microbiome-based technological solutions. Here, we study microbial community assembly through a computational analysis of phylogenetic core groups (PCGs): discrete portions of the bacterial phylogeny with high prevalence in the ecosystem under study. We first show that the existence of PCGs was a predominant feature of the varied set of microbial ecosystems studied. Then, we re-analyzed an in vitro experimental dataset using a PCG-based approach, drawing only from its community composition data and from publicly available genomic databases. Using mainly genome scale metabolic models and population dynamics modeling, we obtained ecological insights on metabolic niche structure and population dynamics comparable to those gained after canonical experimentation. Thus, leveraging phylogenetic signal to help unravel microbiome function and assembly rules offers a potential avenue to gain further insight on Earth's microbial ecosystems.
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26
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Fu X, Fu Q, Zhu X, Yang X, Chen H, Li S. Microdiversity sustains the distribution of rhizosphere-associated bacterial species from the root surface to the bulk soil region in maize crop fields. FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE 2023; 14:1266218. [PMID: 37905168 PMCID: PMC10613529 DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1266218] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/24/2023] [Accepted: 09/22/2023] [Indexed: 11/02/2023]
Abstract
Over the years, the microbial community of maize (Zea mays) rhizosphere has been extensively studied; however, the role of microdiversity sustain rhizosphere-associated microbial species distribution from root surface to bulk soil in mature maize is still unclear. Although operational taxonomic units (OTUs) have been used to classify species, amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) have been shown to be effective in representing microdiversity within OTUs at a finer genetic scale. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the role of microdiversity in influencing the distribution of rhizosphere-associated microbial species across environmental gradients from root surface to bulk soil at the OTU and ASV levels. Here, the microbial community structures of bulk, loosely bound, and tightly bound soil samples from maize rhizosphere were examined at OTU and ASV levels. The results showed that OTU and ASV methods exhibited similar microbial community structures in rhizosphere. Additionally, different ecotypes with varying distributions and habitat preferences were observed within the same bacterial OTU at the ASV level, indicating a rich bacterial microdiversity. In contrast, the fungal community exhibited low microdiversity, with no significant relationship between fungal microdiversity and persistence and variability. Moreover, the ecotypes observed within the bacterial OTUs were found to be positively or negatively associated with environmental factors, such as soil organic carbon (SOC), NO3 --N, NH4 +-N contents, and pH. Overall, the results showed that the rich microdiversity could sustain the distribution of rhizosphere-associated bacterial species across environmental gradients from root surface to bulk soil. Further genetic analyses of rhizosphere-associated bacterial species could have considerable implications for potential mediation of microdiversity for sustainable crop production.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xianheng Fu
- State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Ecology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
- State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Water Resource, Shaanxi, China
| | - Qi Fu
- State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Ecology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
| | - Xiaozheng Zhu
- State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Water Resource, Shaanxi, China
| | - Xian Yang
- State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Ecology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
| | - Huaihai Chen
- State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Ecology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
| | - Shiqing Li
- State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Water Resource, Shaanxi, China
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27
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Ustick LJ, Larkin AA, Martiny AC. Global scale phylogeography of functional traits and microdiversity in Prochlorococcus. THE ISME JOURNAL 2023; 17:1671-1679. [PMID: 37454234 PMCID: PMC10504305 DOI: 10.1038/s41396-023-01469-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/30/2023] [Revised: 06/21/2023] [Accepted: 06/21/2023] [Indexed: 07/18/2023]
Abstract
Prochlorococcus is the most numerically abundant photosynthetic organism in the surface ocean. The Prochlorococcus high-light and warm-water adapted ecotype (HLII) is comprised of extensive microdiversity, but specific functional differences between microdiverse sub-clades remain elusive. Here we characterized both functional and phylogenetic diversity within the HLII ecotype using Bio-GO-SHIP metagenomes. We found widespread variation in gene frequency connected to local environmental conditions. Metagenome-assembled marker genes and genomes revealed a globally distributed novel HLII haplotype defined by adaptation to chronically low P conditions (HLII-P). Environmental correlation analysis revealed different factors were driving gene abundances verses phylogenetic differences. An analysis of cultured HLII genomes and metagenome-assembled genomes revealed a subclade within HLII, which corresponded to the novel HLII-P haplotype. This work represents the first global assessment of the HLII ecotype's phylogeography and corresponding functional differences. These findings together expand our understanding of how microdiversity structures functional differences and reveals the importance of nutrients as drivers of microdiversity in Prochlorococcus.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucas J Ustick
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA
- Structural and Computational Biology Research Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Alyse A Larkin
- Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA
- Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, DC, USA
| | - Adam C Martiny
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA.
- Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA.
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28
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Riisgaard-Jensen M, Dottorini G, Nierychlo M, Nielsen PH. Primary settling changes the microbial community of influent wastewater to wastewater treatment plants. WATER RESEARCH 2023; 244:120495. [PMID: 37651867 DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2023.120495] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2023] [Revised: 08/14/2023] [Accepted: 08/16/2023] [Indexed: 09/02/2023]
Abstract
The continuous immigration of bacteria in influent wastewater strongly impacts the microbial community of activated sludge (AS) in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), both in terms of species composition and their abundance. Therefore, it is of interest to elucidate the route of immigrating bacteria into the biological tanks, including the effect of primary settlers. These are commonly used pretreatment units that can possibly selectively increase or reduce the relative abundance of certain bacteria. Species-level identification of the microbial composition of influent wastewater before and after primary settling was carried out in four full-scale municipal WWTPs biweekly over one year by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Overall, 37-49% of incoming COD was removed in the primary settlers. Most genera and species were present in the wastewater to all four plants and the trend of these were investigated across the primary settlers. Approximately 50% of the genera had the same trend across at least three WWTPs. Few genera significantly increased in relative read abundance (3.7%) after settling, while 22.3% showed a significant reduction in relative abundance. We investigated process-critical species in AS, such as known nitrifiers, polyphosphate-accumulating organisms, and filamentous bacteria. Most taxa were affected similarly in all WWTPs including multiple genera involved in bulking in AS. However, some genera, e.g., important polyphosphate-accumulating bacteria, had inconsistent trends across WWTPs, suggesting that the characteristics of the wastewater are important for the trend of some bacteria through primary settling. In all cases, primary settling changed the microbial community of the influent wastewater, posing an obvious candidate for upstream control to optimize the assembly of the microbial communities in activated sludge.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marie Riisgaard-Jensen
- Center for Microbial Communities, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.
| | - Giulia Dottorini
- Center for Microbial Communities, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
| | - Marta Nierychlo
- Center for Microbial Communities, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
| | - Per Halkjær Nielsen
- Center for Microbial Communities, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.
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29
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Ruiz J, de Celis M, Diaz‐Colunga J, Vila JCC, Benitez‐Dominguez B, Vicente J, Santos A, Sanchez A, Belda I. Predictability of the community-function landscape in wine yeast ecosystems. Mol Syst Biol 2023; 19:e11613. [PMID: 37548146 PMCID: PMC10495813 DOI: 10.15252/msb.202311613] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2023] [Revised: 07/26/2023] [Accepted: 07/26/2023] [Indexed: 08/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Predictively linking taxonomic composition and quantitative ecosystem functions is a major aspiration in microbial ecology, which must be resolved if we wish to engineer microbial consortia. Here, we have addressed this open question for an ecological function of major biotechnological relevance: alcoholic fermentation in wine yeast communities. By exhaustively phenotyping an extensive collection of naturally occurring wine yeast strains, we find that most ecologically and industrially relevant traits exhibit phylogenetic signal, allowing functional traits in wine yeast communities to be predicted from taxonomy. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the quantitative contributions of individual wine yeast strains to the function of complex communities followed simple quantitative rules. These regularities can be integrated to quantitatively predict the function of newly assembled consortia. Besides addressing theoretical questions in functional ecology, our results and methodologies can provide a blueprint for rationally managing microbial processes of biotechnological relevance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Javier Ruiz
- Department of Genetics, Physiology and Microbiology, Biology FacultyComplutense University of MadridMadridSpain
- Department of Microbial and Plant BiotechnologyCentre for Biological Research (CIB‐CSIC)MadridSpain
| | - Miguel de Celis
- Department of Genetics, Physiology and Microbiology, Biology FacultyComplutense University of MadridMadridSpain
- Department of Soil, Plant and Environmental QualityInstitute of Agricultural Sciences (ICA‐CSIC)MadridSpain
| | - Juan Diaz‐Colunga
- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary BiologyYale UniversityNew HavenCTUSA
- Department of Microbial BiotechnologyNational Centre for Biotechnology (CNB‐CSIC)MadridSpain
| | - Jean CC Vila
- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary BiologyYale UniversityNew HavenCTUSA
- Department of BiologyStanford UniversityStanfordCAUSA
| | - Belen Benitez‐Dominguez
- Department of Genetics, Physiology and Microbiology, Biology FacultyComplutense University of MadridMadridSpain
| | - Javier Vicente
- Department of Genetics, Physiology and Microbiology, Biology FacultyComplutense University of MadridMadridSpain
| | - Antonio Santos
- Department of Genetics, Physiology and Microbiology, Biology FacultyComplutense University of MadridMadridSpain
| | - Alvaro Sanchez
- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary BiologyYale UniversityNew HavenCTUSA
- Department of Microbial BiotechnologyNational Centre for Biotechnology (CNB‐CSIC)MadridSpain
| | - Ignacio Belda
- Department of Genetics, Physiology and Microbiology, Biology FacultyComplutense University of MadridMadridSpain
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30
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Schlechter RO, Kear EJ, Bernach M, Remus DM, Remus-Emsermann MNP. Metabolic resource overlap impacts competition among phyllosphere bacteria. THE ISME JOURNAL 2023; 17:1445-1454. [PMID: 37355740 PMCID: PMC10432529 DOI: 10.1038/s41396-023-01459-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2023] [Revised: 06/12/2023] [Accepted: 06/13/2023] [Indexed: 06/26/2023]
Abstract
The phyllosphere is densely colonised by microbial communities, despite sparse and heterogeneously distributed resources. The limitation of resources is expected to drive bacterial competition resulting in exclusion or coexistence based on fitness differences and resource overlap between individual colonisers. We studied the impact of resource competition by determining the effects of different bacterial colonisers on the growth of the model epiphyte Pantoea eucalypti 299R (Pe299R). Resource overlap was predicted based on genome-scale metabolic modelling. By combining results of metabolic modelling and pairwise competitions in the Arabidopsis thaliana phyllosphere and in vitro, we found that ten resources sufficed to explain fitness of Pe299R. An effect of both resource overlap and phylogenetic relationships was found on competition outcomes in vitro as well as in the phyllosphere. However, effects of resource competition were much weaker in the phyllosphere when compared to in vitro experiments. When investigating growth dynamics and reproductive success at the single-cell resolution, resource overlap and phylogenetic relationships are only weakly correlated with epiphytic Pe299R reproductive success, indicating that the leaf's spatial heterogeneity mitigates resource competition. Although the correlation is weak, the presence of competitors led to the development of Pe299R subpopulations that experienced different life histories and cell divisions. In some in planta competitions, Pe299R benefitted from the presence of epiphytes despite high resource overlap to the competitor strain suggesting other factors having stronger effects than resource competition. This study provides fundamental insights into how bacterial communities are shaped in heterogeneous environments and a framework to predict competition outcomes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rudolf O Schlechter
- Institute of Microbiology and Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences, Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand.
- Biomolecular Interaction Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand.
- Bioprotection Research Core, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand.
| | - Evan J Kear
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand
| | - Michał Bernach
- Institute of Microbiology and Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences, Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand
- Biomolecular Interaction Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand
| | - Daniela M Remus
- Protein Science and Engineering, Callaghan Innovation, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
| | - Mitja N P Remus-Emsermann
- Institute of Microbiology and Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences, Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
- School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand.
- Biomolecular Interaction Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand.
- Bioprotection Research Core, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8011, New Zealand.
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31
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Wang M, Sun X, Cao B, Chiariello NR, Docherty KM, Field CB, Gao Q, Gutknecht JLM, Guo X, He G, Hungate BA, Lei J, Niboyet A, Le Roux X, Shi Z, Shu W, Yuan M, Zhou J, Yang Y. Long-term elevated precipitation induces grassland soil carbon loss via microbe-plant-soil interplay. GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY 2023; 29:5429-5444. [PMID: 37317051 DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16811] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2023] [Accepted: 05/22/2023] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Global climate models predict that the frequency and intensity of precipitation events will increase in many regions across the world. However, the biosphere-climate feedback to elevated precipitation (eP) remains elusive. Here, we report a study on one of the longest field experiments assessing the effects of eP, alone or in combination with other climate change drivers such as elevated CO2 (eCO2 ), warming and nitrogen deposition. Soil total carbon (C) decreased after a decade of eP treatment, while plant root production decreased after 2 years. To explain this asynchrony, we found that the relative abundances of fungal genes associated with chitin and protein degradation increased and were positively correlated with bacteriophage genes, suggesting a potential viral shunt in C degradation. In addition, eP increased the relative abundances of microbial stress tolerance genes, which are essential for coping with environmental stressors. Microbial responses to eP were phylogenetically conserved. The effects of eP on soil total C, root production, and microbes were interactively affected by eCO2 . Collectively, we demonstrate that long-term eP induces soil C loss, owing to changes in microbial community composition, functional traits, root production, and soil moisture. Our study unveils an important, previously unknown biosphere-climate feedback in Mediterranean-type water-limited ecosystems, namely how eP induces soil C loss via microbe-plant-soil interplay.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mengmeng Wang
- Institute of Ecological Science and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biotechnology for Plant Development, School of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
| | - Xin Sun
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Baichuan Cao
- Institute of Ecological Science and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biotechnology for Plant Development, School of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Nona R Chiariello
- Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Kathryn M Docherty
- Department of Biological Sciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
| | - Christopher B Field
- Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Qun Gao
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
| | - Jessica L M Gutknecht
- Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
| | - Xue Guo
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
- Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
| | - Genhe He
- School of Life Sciences, Key Laboratory of Agricultural Environmental Pollution Prevention and Control in Red Soil Hilly Region of Jiangxi Province, Jinggangshan University, Ji'an, China
| | - Bruce A Hungate
- Center for Ecosystem Science and Society, Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
| | - Jiesi Lei
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
| | - Audrey Niboyet
- Institut d'Ecologie et des Sciences de l'Environnement de Paris, CNRS, INRAE, IRD, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, UPEC, Paris, France
- AgroParisTech, Palaiseau, France
| | - Xavier Le Roux
- Laboratoire d'Ecologie Microbienne, INRAE, CNRS, VetAgroSup, UMR INRAE 1418, UMR CNRS, Université Lyon 1, Université de Lyon, Villeurbanne, France
| | - Zhou Shi
- Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
| | - Wensheng Shu
- Institute of Ecological Science and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biotechnology for Plant Development, School of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Mengting Yuan
- Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
| | - Jizhong Zhou
- Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Microbiology and Plant Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
- Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA
- School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
- School of Computer Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
| | - Yunfeng Yang
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
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Mukherjee A, Tikariha H, Bandla A, Pavagadhi S, Swarup S. Global analyses of biosynthetic gene clusters in phytobiomes reveal strong phylogenetic conservation of terpenes and aryl polyenes. mSystems 2023; 8:e0038723. [PMID: 37409823 PMCID: PMC10469690 DOI: 10.1128/msystems.00387-23] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2023] [Accepted: 05/30/2023] [Indexed: 07/07/2023] Open
Abstract
There are gaps in our understandings on how did the evolutionary relationships among members of the phytobiomes shape their ability to produce tremendously complex specialized metabolites under the influence of plant host. To determine these relationships, we investigated the phylogenetic conservation of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) on a global collection of 4,519 high-quality and nonredundant (out of 12,181) bacterial isolates and metagenome-assembled genomes from 47 different plant hosts and soil, by adopting three independent phylogenomic approaches (D-test, Pagel's λ, and consenTRAIT). We report that the BGCs are phylogenetically conserved to varying strengths and depths in their different classes. We show that the ability to produce specialized metabolites qualifies as a complex trait, and the depth of conservation is equivalent to ecologically relevant complex microbial traits. Interestingly, terpene and aryl polyene BGCs had the strongest phylogenetic conservation in the phytobiomes, but not in the soil microbiomes. Furthermore, we showed that terpenes are largely uncharacterized in phytobiomes and pinpointed specific clades that harbor potentially novel terpenes. Taken together, this study sheds light on the evolution of specialized metabolites' biosynthesis potential in phytobiomes under the influence of plant hosts and presents strategies to rationally guide the discovery of potentially novel classes of metabolites. IMPORTANCE This study expands our understandings of the biosynthetic potential of phytobiomes by using such worldwide and extensive collection of microbiomes from plants and soil. Apart from providing such vital resource for the plant microbiome researchers, this study provides fundamental insights into the evolution of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) in phytobiomes under the influence of plant host. Specifically, we report that the strength of phylogenetic conservation in microbiomes varies for different classes of BGCs and is influenced as a result of plant host association. Furthermore, our results indicate that biosynthetic potential of specialized metabolites is deeply conserved equivalent to other complex and ecologically relevant microbial traits. Finally, for the most conserved class of specialized metabolites (terpenes), we identified clades harboring potentially novel class of molecules. Future studies could focus on plant-microbe coevolution and interactions through specialized metabolites building upon these findings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arijit Mukherjee
- Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Hitesh Tikariha
- Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Aditya Bandla
- Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- NUS Environmental Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Shruti Pavagadhi
- Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- NUS Environmental Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Sanjay Swarup
- Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
- NUS Environmental Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
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Rodriguez CI, Isobe K, Martiny JBH. Short-term dietary fiber interventions produce consistent gut microbiome responses across studies. RESEARCH SQUARE 2023:rs.3.rs-3283675. [PMID: 37674721 PMCID: PMC10479438 DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3283675/v1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/08/2023]
Abstract
Background The composition of the human gut microbiome varies tremendously among individuals, making the effects of dietary or treatment interventions difficult to detect and characterize. The consumption of fiber is important for gut health, yet the specific effects of increased fiber intake on the gut microbiome vary across studies. The variation in study outcomes might be due to inter-individual (or inter-population) variation or to the details of the interventions including the types of fiber, length of study, size of cohort, and molecular approaches. Thus, to identify consistent fiber-induced responses in the gut microbiome of healthy individuals, we re-analyzed 16S rRNA sequencing data from 21 dietary fiber interventions from 12 human studies, which included 2564 fecal samples from 538 subjects across all interventions. Results Short-term increases in dietary fiber consumption resulted in highly consistent gut microbiome responses across studies. Increased fiber consumption explained an average of 1.5% of compositional variation (versus 82% of variation attributed to the individual), reduced alpha diversity, and resulted in phylogenetically conserved responses in relative abundances among bacterial taxa. Additionally, we identified bacterial clades, at approximately the genus level, that were highly consistent in their response (increasing or decreasing in their relative abundance) to dietary fiber interventions across the studies. Conclusions Our study is an example of the power of synthesizing and reanalyzing microbiome data from many intervention studies. Despite high inter-individual variation of the composition of the human gut microbiome, dietary fiber interventions cause a consistent response both in the degree of change as well as the particular taxa that respond to increased fiber.
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Ndinga-Muniania C, Wornson N, Fulcher MR, Borer ET, Seabloom EW, Kinkel L, May G. Cryptic functional diversity within a grass mycobiome. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0287990. [PMID: 37471328 PMCID: PMC10358963 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287990] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/06/2023] [Accepted: 06/17/2023] [Indexed: 07/22/2023] Open
Abstract
Eukaryotic hosts harbor tremendously diverse microbiomes that affect host fitness and response to environmental challenges. Fungal endophytes are prominent members of plant microbiomes, but we lack information on the diversity in functional traits affecting their interactions with their host and environment. We used two culturing approaches to isolate fungal endophytes associated with the widespread, dominant prairie grass Andropogon gerardii and characterized their taxonomic diversity using rDNA barcode sequencing. A randomly chosen subset of fungi representing the diversity of each leaf was then evaluated for their use of different carbon compound resources and growth on those resources. Applying community phylogenetic analyses, we discovered that these fungal endophyte communities are comprised of phylogenetically distinct assemblages of slow- and fast-growing fungi that differ in their use and growth on differing carbon substrates. Our results demonstrate previously undescribed and cryptic functional diversity in carbon resource use and growth in fungal endophyte communities of A. gerardii.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cedric Ndinga-Muniania
- Plant and Microbial Biology Graduate Program, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
| | - Nicholas Wornson
- School of Statistics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America
- Department of Plant Pathology, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
| | - Michael R Fulcher
- Foreign Disease-Weed Science Research Unit, United States Department of Agriculture, Frederick, Maryland, United States of America
| | - Elizabeth T Borer
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
| | - Eric W Seabloom
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
| | - Linda Kinkel
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
- Department of Plant Pathology, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
| | - Georgiana May
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America
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Walkup J, Dang C, Mau RL, Hayer M, Schwartz E, Stone BW, Hofmockel KS, Koch BJ, Purcell AM, Pett-Ridge J, Wang C, Hungate BA, Morrissey EM. The predictive power of phylogeny on growth rates in soil bacterial communities. ISME COMMUNICATIONS 2023; 3:73. [PMID: 37454187 PMCID: PMC10349831 DOI: 10.1038/s43705-023-00281-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2023] [Revised: 06/27/2023] [Accepted: 06/30/2023] [Indexed: 07/18/2023]
Abstract
Predicting ecosystem function is critical to assess and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Quantitative predictions of microbially mediated ecosystem processes are typically uninformed by microbial biodiversity. Yet new tools allow the measurement of taxon-specific traits within natural microbial communities. There is mounting evidence of a phylogenetic signal in these traits, which may support prediction and microbiome management frameworks. We investigated phylogeny-based trait prediction using bacterial growth rates from soil communities in Arctic, boreal, temperate, and tropical ecosystems. Here we show that phylogeny predicts growth rates of soil bacteria, explaining an average of 31%, and up to 58%, of the variation within ecosystems. Despite limited overlap in community composition across these ecosystems, shared nodes in the phylogeny enabled ancestral trait reconstruction and cross-ecosystem predictions. Phylogenetic relationships could explain up to 38% (averaging 14%) of the variation in growth rates across the highly disparate ecosystems studied. Our results suggest that shared evolutionary history contributes to similarity in the relative growth rates of related bacteria in the wild, allowing phylogeny-based predictions to explain a substantial amount of the variation in taxon-specific functional traits, within and across ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jeth Walkup
- Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA
| | - Chansotheary Dang
- Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA
| | - Rebecca L Mau
- Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
| | - Michaela Hayer
- Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
| | - Egbert Schwartz
- Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
| | - Bram W Stone
- Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 99354, USA
| | - Kirsten S Hofmockel
- Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 99354, USA
| | - Benjamin J Koch
- Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
| | - Alicia M Purcell
- Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 79409, USA
| | - Jennifer Pett-Ridge
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Physical and Life Science Directorate, Livermore, CA, USA
- University of California Merced, Life & Environmental Sciences Department, Merced, CA, 95343, USA
| | - Chao Wang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, LN, China
| | - Bruce A Hungate
- Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
- Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, 86011, USA
| | - Ember M Morrissey
- Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA.
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Morales-Poole JR, de Vega C, Tsuji K, Jacquemyn H, Junker RR, Herrera CM, Michiels C, Lievens B, Álvarez-Pérez S. Sugar Concentration, Nitrogen Availability, and Phylogenetic Factors Determine the Ability of Acinetobacter spp. and Rosenbergiella spp. to Grow in Floral Nectar. MICROBIAL ECOLOGY 2023; 86:377-391. [PMID: 35930073 PMCID: PMC10293439 DOI: 10.1007/s00248-022-02088-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2021] [Accepted: 07/25/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
The floral nectar of angiosperms harbors a variety of microorganisms that depend predominantly on animal visitors for their dispersal. Although some members of the genus Acinetobacter and all currently known species of Rosenbergiella are thought to be adapted to thrive in nectar, there is limited information about the response of these bacteria to variation in the chemical characteristics of floral nectar. We investigated the growth performance of a diverse collection of Acinetobacter (n = 43) and Rosenbergiella (n = 45) isolates obtained from floral nectar and the digestive tract of flower-visiting bees in a set of 12 artificial nectars differing in sugar content (15% w/v or 50% w/v), nitrogen content (3.48/1.67 ppm or 348/167 ppm of total nitrogen/amino nitrogen), and sugar composition (only sucrose, 1/3 sucrose + 1/3 glucose + 1/3 fructose, or 1/2 glucose + 1/2 fructose). Growth was only observed in four of the 12 artificial nectars. Those containing elevated sugar concentration (50% w/v) and low nitrogen content (3.48/1.67 ppm) were limiting for bacterial growth. Furthermore, phylogenetic analyses revealed that the ability of the bacteria to grow in different types of nectar is highly conserved between closely related isolates and genotypes, but this conservatism rapidly vanishes deeper in phylogeny. Overall, these results demonstrate that the ability of Acinetobacter spp. and Rosenbergiella spp. to grow in floral nectar largely depends on nectar chemistry and bacterial phylogeny.
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Affiliation(s)
- José R Morales-Poole
- Department of Animal Health, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain
| | - Clara de Vega
- Departamento de Biología Vegetal y Ecología, Universidad de Sevilla, 41012, Seville, Spain
| | - Kaoru Tsuji
- Department of Biology, Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, Hyogo, 657-8501, Japan
| | - Hans Jacquemyn
- Laboratory of Plant Conservation and Population Biology, Biology Department, KU Leuven, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium
| | - Robert R Junker
- Evolutionary Ecology of Plants, Department of Biology, Philipps-University Marburg, 35043, Marburg, Germany
- Department of Biosciences, University Salzburg, 5020, Salzburg, Austria
| | | | - Chris Michiels
- Laboratory of Food Microbiology, Department of Microbial and Molecular Systems, KU Leuven, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium
| | - Bart Lievens
- Laboratory for Process Microbial Ecology and Bioinspirational Management (PME&BIM), Department of Microbial and Molecular Systems, KU Leuven, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium
| | - Sergio Álvarez-Pérez
- Department of Animal Health, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain.
- Laboratory for Process Microbial Ecology and Bioinspirational Management (PME&BIM), Department of Microbial and Molecular Systems, KU Leuven, B-3001, Heverlee, Belgium.
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37
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Sun P, Wang M, Zheng W, Li S, Zhu X, Chai X, Zhao S. Unbalanced diets enhance the complexity of gut microbial network but destabilize its stability and resistance. STRESS BIOLOGY 2023; 3:20. [PMID: 37676325 PMCID: PMC10441997 DOI: 10.1007/s44154-023-00098-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/14/2023] [Accepted: 06/05/2023] [Indexed: 09/08/2023]
Abstract
Stability is a fundamental ecological property of the gut microbiota and is associated with host health. Numerous studies have shown that unbalanced dietary components disturb the gut microbial composition and thereby contribute to the onset and progression of disease. However, the impact of unbalanced diets on the stability of the gut microbiota is poorly understood. In the present study, four-week-old mice were fed a plant-based diet high in refined carbohydrates or a high-fat diet for four weeks to simulate a persistent unbalanced diet. We found that persistent unbalanced diets significantly reduced the gut bacterial richness and increased the complexity of bacterial co-occurrence networks. Furthermore, the gut bacterial response to unbalanced diets was phylogenetically conserved, which reduced network modularity and enhanced the proportion of positive associations between community taxon, thereby amplifying the co-oscillation of perturbations among community species to destabilize gut microbial communities. The disturbance test revealed that the gut microbiota of mice fed with unbalanced diets was less resistant to antibiotic perturbation and pathogenic bacteria invasion. This study may fill a gap in the mechanistic understanding of the gut microbiota stability in response to diet and provide new insights into the gut microbial ecology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Penghao Sun
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
| | - Mengli Wang
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
| | - Wei Zheng
- College of Resources and Environment Sciences, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
| | - Shuzhen Li
- Aquatic EcoHealth Group, Fujian Key Laboratory of Watershed Ecology, Key Laboratory of Urban Environment and Health, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China
| | - Xiaoyan Zhu
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
| | - Xuejun Chai
- College of Basic Medicine, Xi'an Medical University, Xi'an, China.
| | - Shanting Zhao
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China.
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Tripathi R, Reza A, Mertel A, Su G, Calabrese JM. A network-based approach to identifying correlations between phylogeny, morphological traits and occurrence of fish species in US river basins. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0287482. [PMID: 37352314 PMCID: PMC10289417 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287482] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/13/2023] [Accepted: 06/06/2023] [Indexed: 06/25/2023] Open
Abstract
The complex network framework has been successfully used to model interactions between entities in Complex Systems in the Biological Sciences such as Proteomics, Genomics, Neuroscience, and Ecology. Networks of organisms at different spatial scales and in different ecosystems have provided insights into community assembly patterns and emergent properties of ecological systems. In the present work, we investigate two questions pertaining to fish species assembly rules in US river basins, a) if morphologically similar fish species also tend to be phylogenetically closer, and b) to what extent are co-occurring species that are phylogenetically close also morphologically similar? For the first question, we construct a network of Hydrologic Unit Code 8 (HUC8) regions as nodes with interaction strengths (edges) governed by the number of common species. For each of the modules of this network, which are found to be geographically separated, there is differential yet significant evidence that phylogenetic distance predicts morphological distance. For the second question, we construct and analyze nearest neighbor directed networks of species based on their morphological distances and phylogenetic distances. Through module detection on these networks and comparing the module-level mean phylogenetic distance and mean morphological distance with the number of basins of common occurrence of species in modules, we find that both phylogeny and morphology of species have significant roles in governing species co-occurrence, i.e. phylogenetically and morphologically distant species tend to co-exist more. In addition, between the two quantities (morphological distance and phylogentic distance), we find that morphological distance is a stronger determinant of species co-occurrences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Richa Tripathi
- Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS), Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Görlitz, Germany
| | - Amit Reza
- Nikhef, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Institute for Gravitational and Subatomic Physics (GRASP), Utrecht University, CC Utrecht, The Netherlands
| | - Adam Mertel
- Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS), Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Görlitz, Germany
| | - Guohuan Su
- Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS), Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Görlitz, Germany
| | - Justin M. Calabrese
- Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS), Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Görlitz, Germany
- Dept. of Ecological Modelling, UFZ – Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany
- Dept. of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States of America
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Colin Y, Arcanjo C, Da Costa C, Vivant AL, Trémolet G, Giusti-Petrucciani N, Duflot A, Forget-Leray J, Berthe T, Boulangé-Lecomte C. Decoupled responses of the copepod Eurytemora affinis transcriptome and its microbiota to dissolved copper exposure. AQUATIC TOXICOLOGY (AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS) 2023; 259:106546. [PMID: 37120957 DOI: 10.1016/j.aquatox.2023.106546] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2022] [Revised: 04/24/2023] [Accepted: 04/25/2023] [Indexed: 05/15/2023]
Abstract
Chemical contamination is a common threat to biota thriving in estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Of particular importance is that trace metals tend to accumulate and exert deleterious effects on small invertebrates such as zooplankton, which are essential trophic links between phytoplankton and higher-level consumers in aquatic food webs. Beyond the direct effects of the contamination, we hypothesized that metal exposure could also affect the zooplankton microbiota, which in turn might further impair host fitness. To assess this assumption, copepods (Eurytemora affinis) were sampled in the oligo-mesohaline zone of the Seine estuary and exposed to dissolved copper (25 µg.L-1) over a 72-hour time period. The copepod response to copper treatment was assessed by determining transcriptomic changes in E. affinis and the alteration of its microbiota. Unexpectedly, very few genes were differentially expressed in the copper-treated copepods compared to the controls for both male and female samples, while a clear dichotomy between sex was highlighted with 80% of the genes showing sex-biased expression. In contrast, copper increased the taxonomic diversity of the microbiota and resulted in substantial compositional changes at both the phyla and genus levels. Phylogenetic reconstruction of the microbiota further suggested that copper mitigated the phylogenetic relatedness of taxa at the basal tree structure of the phylogeny, whereas it strengthened it at the terminal branches. Increased terminal phylogenetic clustering in the copper-treated copepods coincided with higher proportions of bacterial genera previously identified as copper resistant (e.g., Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, Alkanindiges, Colwellia) and a higher relative abundance of the copAox gene encoding a periplasmic inducible multi-copper oxidase. The enrichment in micro-organisms likely to perform copper sequestration and/or enzymatic transformation processes, underlines the need to consider the microbial component during evaluation of the vulnerability of zooplankton to metallic stress.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yannick Colin
- Univ Rouen Normandie, UNICAEN, CNRS, M2C UMR 6143, F-76000 Rouen, France; Sorbonne Université, CNRS, EPHE, UMR METIS, F-75005, Paris, France.
| | - Caroline Arcanjo
- Université Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, FR CNRS 3730 SCALE, UMR-I 02 SEBIO, Le Havre, F-76600 Le Havre, France
| | - Claire Da Costa
- Univ Rouen Normandie, UNICAEN, CNRS, M2C UMR 6143, F-76000 Rouen, France
| | - Anne-Laure Vivant
- Univ Rouen Normandie, UNICAEN, CNRS, M2C UMR 6143, F-76000 Rouen, France
| | - Gauthier Trémolet
- Université Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, FR CNRS 3730 SCALE, UMR-I 02 SEBIO, Le Havre, F-76600 Le Havre, France
| | - Nathalie Giusti-Petrucciani
- Université Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, FR CNRS 3730 SCALE, UMR-I 02 SEBIO, Le Havre, F-76600 Le Havre, France
| | - Aurélie Duflot
- Université Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, FR CNRS 3730 SCALE, UMR-I 02 SEBIO, Le Havre, F-76600 Le Havre, France
| | - Joëlle Forget-Leray
- Université Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, FR CNRS 3730 SCALE, UMR-I 02 SEBIO, Le Havre, F-76600 Le Havre, France
| | - Thierry Berthe
- Univ Rouen Normandie, UNICAEN, CNRS, M2C UMR 6143, F-76000 Rouen, France; Sorbonne Université, CNRS, EPHE, UMR METIS, F-75005, Paris, France
| | - Céline Boulangé-Lecomte
- Université Le Havre Normandie, Normandie Univ, FR CNRS 3730 SCALE, UMR-I 02 SEBIO, Le Havre, F-76600 Le Havre, France
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Kim A, Sevanto S, Moore ER, Lubbers N. Latent Dirichlet Allocation modeling of environmental microbiomes. PLoS Comput Biol 2023; 19:e1011075. [PMID: 37289841 PMCID: PMC10249879 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011075] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/22/2022] [Accepted: 04/05/2023] [Indexed: 06/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Interactions between stressed organisms and their microbiome environments may provide new routes for understanding and controlling biological systems. However, microbiomes are a form of high-dimensional data, with thousands of taxa present in any given sample, which makes untangling the interaction between an organism and its microbial environment a challenge. Here we apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a technique for language modeling, which decomposes the microbial communities into a set of topics (non-mutually-exclusive sub-communities) that compactly represent the distribution of full communities. LDA provides a lens into the microbiome at broad and fine-grained taxonomic levels, which we show on two datasets. In the first dataset, from the literature, we show how LDA topics succinctly recapitulate many results from a previous study on diseased coral species. We then apply LDA to a new dataset of maize soil microbiomes under drought, and find a large number of significant associations between the microbiome topics and plant traits as well as associations between the microbiome and the experimental factors, e.g. watering level. This yields new information on the plant-microbial interactions in maize and shows that LDA technique is useful for studying the coupling between microbiomes and stressed organisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anastasiia Kim
- Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States of America
| | - Sanna Sevanto
- Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States of America
| | - Eric R. Moore
- Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States of America
| | - Nicholas Lubbers
- Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States of America
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Graham EB, Knelman JE. Implications of Soil Microbial Community Assembly for Ecosystem Restoration: Patterns, Process, and Potential. MICROBIAL ECOLOGY 2023; 85:809-819. [PMID: 36735065 DOI: 10.1007/s00248-022-02155-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/16/2022] [Accepted: 12/02/2022] [Indexed: 05/04/2023]
Abstract
While it is now widely accepted that microorganisms provide essential functions in restoration ecology, the nature of relationships between microbial community assembly and ecosystem recovery remains unclear. There has been a longstanding challenge to decipher whether microorganisms facilitate or simply follow ecosystem recovery, and evidence for each is mixed at best. We propose that understanding microbial community assembly processes is critical to understanding the role of microorganisms during ecosystem restoration and thus optimizing management strategies. We examine how the connection between environment, community structure, and function is fundamentally underpinned by the processes governing community assembly of these microbial communities. We review important factors to consider in evaluating microbial community structure in the context of ecosystem recovery as revealed in studies of microbial succession: (1) variation in community assembly processes, (2) linkages to ecosystem function, and (3) measurable microbial community attributes. We seek to empower restoration ecology with microbial assembly and successional understandings that can generate actionable insights and vital contexts for ecosystem restoration efforts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily B Graham
- Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA.
- School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Richland, WA, USA.
| | - Joseph E Knelman
- Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
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Ren Z, Ma K, Jia X, Wang Q, Zhang C, Li X. Metagenomics Unveils Microbial Diversity and Their Biogeochemical Roles in Water and Sediment of Thermokarst Lakes in the Yellow River Source Area. MICROBIAL ECOLOGY 2023; 85:904-915. [PMID: 35650293 DOI: 10.1007/s00248-022-02053-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2021] [Accepted: 05/25/2022] [Indexed: 05/04/2023]
Abstract
Thermokarst lakes have long been recognized as biogeochemical hotspots, especially as sources of greenhouse gases. On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, thermokarst lakes are experiencing extensive changes due to faster warming. For a deep understanding of internal lake biogeochemical processes, we applied metagenomic analyses to investigate the microbial diversity and their biogeochemical roles in sediment and water of thermokarst lakes in the Yellow River Source Area (YRSA). Sediment microbial communities (SMCs) had lower species and gene richness than water microbial communities (WMCs). Bacteria were the most abundant component in both SMCs and WMCs with significantly different abundant genera. The functional analyses showed that both SMCs and WMCs had low potential in methanogenesis but strong in aerobic respiration, nitrogen assimilation, exopolyphosphatase, glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterases, and polyphosphate kinase. Moreover, SMCs were enriched in genes involved in anaerobic carbon fixation, aerobic carbon fixation, fermentation, most nitrogen metabolism pathways, dissimilatory sulfate reduction, sulfide oxidation, polysulfide reduction, 2-phosphonopropionate transporter, and phosphate regulation. WMCs were enriched in genes involved in assimilatory sulfate reduction, sulfur mineralization, phosphonoacetate hydrolase, and phosphonate transport. Functional potentials suggest the differences of greenhouse gas emission, nutrient cycling, and living strategies between SMCs and WMCs. This study provides insight into the main biogeochemical processes and their properties in thermokarst lakes in YRSA, improving our understanding of the roles and fates of these lakes in a warming world.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ze Ren
- Research and Development Center for Watershed Environmental Eco-Engineering, Advanced Institute of Natural Sciences, Beijing Normal University, 18 Jinfeng Road, Xiangzhou Distract, Zhuhai, 519087, Guangdong, China.
- School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China.
| | - Kang Ma
- School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Xuan Jia
- College of Education for the Future, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai, 519087, China
| | - Qing Wang
- Research and Development Center for Watershed Environmental Eco-Engineering, Advanced Institute of Natural Sciences, Beijing Normal University, 18 Jinfeng Road, Xiangzhou Distract, Zhuhai, 519087, Guangdong, China
- School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
| | - Cheng Zhang
- Research and Development Center for Watershed Environmental Eco-Engineering, Advanced Institute of Natural Sciences, Beijing Normal University, 18 Jinfeng Road, Xiangzhou Distract, Zhuhai, 519087, Guangdong, China
- School of Engineering Technology, Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai, 519087, China
| | - Xia Li
- Research and Development Center for Watershed Environmental Eco-Engineering, Advanced Institute of Natural Sciences, Beijing Normal University, 18 Jinfeng Road, Xiangzhou Distract, Zhuhai, 519087, Guangdong, China
- School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China
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Moore ER, Carter KR, Heneghan JP, Steadman CR, Nachtsheim AC, Anderson-Cook C, Dickman LT, Newman BD, Dunbar J, Sevanto S, Albright MBN. Microbial Drivers of Plant Performance during Drought Depend upon Community Composition and the Greater Soil Environment. Microbiol Spectr 2023:e0147622. [PMID: 36943043 PMCID: PMC10101012 DOI: 10.1128/spectrum.01476-22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/23/2023] Open
Abstract
The increasing occurrence of drought is a global challenge that threatens food security through direct impacts to both plants and their interacting soil microorganisms. Plant growth promoting microbes are increasingly being harnessed to improve plant performance under stress. However, the magnitude of microbiome impacts on both structural and physiological plant traits under water limited and water replete conditions are not well-characterized. Using two microbiomes sourced from a ponderosa pine forest and an agricultural field, we performed a greenhouse experiment that used a crossed design to test the individual and combined effects of the water availability and the soil microbiome composition on plant performance. Specifically, we studied the structural and leaf functional traits of maize that are relevant to drought tolerance. We further examined how microbial relationships with plant phenotypes varied under different combinations of microbial composition and water availability. We found that water availability and microbial composition affected plant structural traits. Surprisingly, they did not alter leaf function. Maize grown in the forest-soil microbiome produced larger plants under well-watered and water-limited conditions, compared to an agricultural soil community. Although leaf functional traits were not significantly different between the watering and microbiome treatments, the bacterial composition and abundance explained significant variability in both plant structure and leaf function within individual treatments, especially water-limited plants. Our results suggest that bacteria-plant interactions that promote plant performance under stress depend upon the greater community composition and the abiotic environment. IMPORTANCE Globally, drought is an increasingly common and severe stress that causes significant damage to agricultural and wild plants, thereby threatening food security. Despite growing evidence of the potential benefits of soil microorganisms on plant performance under stress, decoupling the effects of the microbiome composition versus the water availability on plant growth and performance remains a challenge. We used a highly controlled and replicated greenhouse experiment to understand the impacts of microbial community composition and water limitation on corn growth and drought-relevant functions. We found that both factors affected corn growth, and, interestingly, that individual microbial relationships with corn growth and leaf function were unique to specific watering/microbiome treatment combinations. This finding may help explain the inconsistent success of previously identified microbial inocula in improving plant performance in the face of drought, outside controlled environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eric R Moore
- Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - Kelsey R Carter
- Earth and Environmental Science Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - John P Heneghan
- Earth and Environmental Science Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - Christina R Steadman
- Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
- Earth and Environmental Science Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - Abigael C Nachtsheim
- Statistical Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | | | - L Turin Dickman
- Earth and Environmental Science Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - Brent D Newman
- Earth and Environmental Science Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - John Dunbar
- Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
| | - Sanna Sevanto
- Earth and Environmental Science Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
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Distinct Growth Responses of Tundra Soil Bacteria to Short-Term and Long-Term Warming. Appl Environ Microbiol 2023; 89:e0154322. [PMID: 36847530 PMCID: PMC10056963 DOI: 10.1128/aem.01543-22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Increases in Arctic temperatures have thawed permafrost and accelerated tundra soil microbial activity, releasing greenhouse gases that amplify climate warming. Warming over time has also accelerated shrub encroachment in the tundra, altering plant input abundance and quality, and causing further changes to soil microbial processes. To better understand the effects of increased temperature and the accumulated effects of climate change on soil bacterial activity, we quantified the growth responses of individual bacterial taxa to short-term warming (3 months) and long-term warming (29 years) in moist acidic tussock tundra. Intact soil was assayed in the field for 30 days using 18O-labeled water, from which taxon-specific rates of 18O incorporation into DNA were estimated as a proxy for growth. Experimental treatments warmed the soil by approximately 1.5°C. Short-term warming increased average relative growth rates across the assemblage by 36%, and this increase was attributable to emergent growing taxa not detected in other treatments that doubled the diversity of growing bacteria. However, long-term warming increased average relative growth rates by 151%, and this was largely attributable to taxa that co-occurred in the ambient temperature controls. There was also coherence in relative growth rates within broad taxonomic levels with orders tending to have similar growth rates in all treatments. Growth responses tended to be neutral in short-term warming and positive in long-term warming for most taxa and phylogenetic groups co-occurring across treatments regardless of phylogeny. Taken together, growing bacteria responded distinctly to short-term and long-term warming, and taxa growing in each treatment exhibited deep phylogenetic organization. IMPORTANCE Soil carbon stocks in the tundra and underlying permafrost have become increasingly vulnerable to microbial decomposition due to climate change. The microbial responses to Arctic warming must be understood in order to predict the effects of future microbial activity on carbon balance in a warming Arctic. In response to our warming treatments, tundra soil bacteria grew faster, consistent with increased rates of decomposition and carbon flux to the atmosphere. Our findings suggest that bacterial growth rates may continue to increase in the coming decades as faster growth is driven by the accumulated effects of long-term warming. Observed phylogenetic organization of bacterial growth rates may also permit taxonomy-based predictions of bacterial responses to climate change and inclusion into ecosystem models.
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Phylogenetic Conservation of Soil Microbial Responses to Elevated Tropospheric Ozone and Nitrogen Fertilization. mSystems 2023; 8:e0072122. [PMID: 36625584 PMCID: PMC9948724 DOI: 10.1128/msystems.00721-22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/11/2023] Open
Abstract
Plant primary productivity and crop yields have been reduced due to the doubled level of global tropospheric ozone. Little is known about how elevated ozone affects soil microbial communities in the cropland ecosystem and whether such effects are sensitive to the nitrogen (N) supply. Here, we examined the responses of bacterial and fungal communities in maize soils to elevated ozone (+60 ppb ozone) across different levels of N fertilization (+60, +120, and +240 kg N ha-1yr-1). The fungal alpha diversity was decreased (P < 0.05), whereas the bacterial alpha diversity displayed no significant change under elevated ozone. Significant (P < 0.05) effects of N fertilization and elevated ozone on both the bacterial and fungal communities were observed. However, no interactive effects between N fertilization and elevated ozone were observed for bacterial and fungal communities (P > 0.1). The bacterial responses to N fertilization as well as the bacterial and fungal responses to elevated ozone were all phylogenetically conserved, showing universal homogeneous selection (homogeneous environmental conditions leading to more similar community structures). In detail, bacterial Alphaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Chloroflexi, as well as fungal Ascomycota, were increased by elevated ozone, whereas bacterial Gammaproteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Elusimicrobia, as well as fungal Glomeromycota, were decreased by elevated ozone (P < 0.05). These ozone-responsive phyla were generally correlated (P < 0.05) with plant biomass, plant carbon (C) uptake, and soil dissolved organic C, demonstrating that elevated ozone affects plant-microbe interactions. Our study highlighted that microbial responses to elevated ozone display a phylogenetic clustering pattern, suggesting that response strategies to elevated ozone stress may be phylogenetically conserved ecological traits. IMPORTANCE The interactions of plant and soil microbial communities support plant growth and health. The increasing tropospheric ozone decreases crop biomass and also alters soil microbial communities, but the ways in which crops and their associated soil microbial communities respond to elevated tropospheric ozone are not clear, and it is also obscure whether the interactions between ozone and the commonly applied N fertilization exist. We showed that the microbial responses to both elevated ozone and N fertilization were phylogenetically conserved. However, the microbial communities that responded to N fertilization and elevated ozone were different, and this was further verified by the lack of an interactive effect between N fertilization and elevated ozone. Given that the global tropospheric ozone concentration will continue to increase in the coming decades, the decrease of specific microbial populations caused by elevated ozone would result in the extinction of certain microbial taxa. This ozone-induced effect will further harm crop production, and awareness is urgently needed.
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Ustick LJ, Larkin AA, Martiny AC. Global scale phylogeography of functional traits and microdiversity in Prochlorococcus. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.01.24.525399. [PMID: 36747826 PMCID: PMC9900765 DOI: 10.1101/2023.01.24.525399] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/26/2023]
Abstract
Prochlorococcus is the most numerically abundant photosynthetic organism in the surface ocean. The Prochlorococcus high-light and warm-water adapted ecotype (HLII) is comprised of extensive microdiversity, but specific functional differences between microdiverse sub-clades remain elusive. Here we characterized both functional and phylogenetic diversity within the HLII ecotype using Bio-GO-SHIP metagenomes. We found widespread variation in gene frequency connected to local environmental conditions. Metagenomically assembled marker genes and genomes revealed a globally distributed novel HLII haplotype defined by adaptation to chronically low P conditions (HLII-P). Environmental correlation analysis revealed different factors were driving gene abundances verses phylogenetic differences. An analysis of cultured HLII genomes and metagenomically assembled genomes revealed a subclade within HLII, which corresponded to the novel HLII-P haplotype. This work represents the first global assessment of the HLII ecotype’s phylogeography and corresponding functional differences. These findings together expand our understanding of how microdiversity structures functional differences and reveals the importance of nutrients as drivers of microdiversity in Prochlorococcus .
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Elevated temperature and CO 2 strongly affect the growth strategies of soil bacteria. Nat Commun 2023; 14:391. [PMID: 36693873 PMCID: PMC9873651 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36086-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2022] [Accepted: 01/13/2023] [Indexed: 01/26/2023] Open
Abstract
The trait-based strategies of microorganisms appear to be phylogenetically conserved, but acclimation to climate change may complicate the scenario. To study the roles of phylogeny and environment on bacterial responses to sudden moisture increases, we determine bacterial population-specific growth rates by 18O-DNA quantitative stable isotope probing (18O-qSIP) in soils subjected to a free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) combined with warming. We find that three growth strategies of bacterial taxa - rapid, intermediate and slow responders, defined by the timing of the peak growth rates - are phylogenetically conserved, even at the sub-phylum level. For example, members of class Bacilli and Sphingobacteriia are mainly rapid responders. Climate regimes, however, modify the growth strategies of over 90% of species, partly confounding the initial phylogenetic pattern. The growth of rapid bacterial responders is more influenced by phylogeny, whereas the variance for slow responders is primarily explained by environmental conditions. Overall, these results highlight the role of phylogenetic and environmental constraints in understanding and predicting the growth strategies of soil microorganisms under global change scenarios.
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48
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Zhu M, Zhang L, Xu J, He Y. Improved understanding on biochar effect in electron supplied anaerobic soil as evidenced by dechlorination and methanogenesis processes. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2023; 857:159346. [PMID: 36228795 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159346] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/03/2022] [Revised: 09/03/2022] [Accepted: 10/06/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Research interest in biochar as an environmental remediation material has rapidly increased over the past few years. However, the effect of biochar on typical environmental processes in anaerobic soil environment has been insufficiently discussed. By regulating the electron donors with sodium acetate or pyruvate, the effects and underpinning chemical-microbiological coupling mechanisms of biochar under anaerobic conditions were disclosed. Unlike the electron limited condition, the addition of electron donors alleviated the competition for electrons among various reduction processes in the soil. The effect of biochar in regulating the electron transfer processes was lessened. But more than doubled methane emissions were resulted by the exogenous substances, especially with the synergic effect of biochar. Biochar addition increased soil environmental heterogeneity. It might indirectly affect the reductive transformation of γ-HCH via increasing the bioavailability of pollutants through adsorption and promoting the metabolism of some rare microorganisms. Anaerolineaceae, Peptococcaceae and Methanosarcina had coherent phylogenetic patterns and were likely to be the enablers for the reductive dechlorination process in flooded soil. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPLICATION: Previous studies have widely reported the performance characteristics of biochar, but its effects under anaerobic environments are not systematically understood. By regulating the electron donors, the competition for electrons among various reduction processes in the soil might be alleviated, resulting in a lessened effect of biochar in regulating the electron transfer processes. The findings presented in this study highlight the role of biochar to the dynamic changes of reduction processes under anaerobic environments. The relevant soil conditions such as the electron donors and the functional microbial groups should be adequately considered for maximizing the all-around beneficial efficiency of biochar amendments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Min Zhu
- School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310012, China; Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Resources and Environment, Institute of Soil and Water Resources and Environmental Science, College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | - Lujun Zhang
- Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA
| | - Jianming Xu
- Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Resources and Environment, Institute of Soil and Water Resources and Environmental Science, College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
| | - Yan He
- Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Resources and Environment, Institute of Soil and Water Resources and Environmental Science, College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China; Key Laboratory of Environment Remediation and Ecological Health, Ministry of Education, Hangzhou 310058, China.
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Cui Z, Li R, Li F, Jin L, Wu H, Cheng C, Ma Y, Wang Z, Wang Y. Structural characteristics and diversity of the rhizosphere bacterial communities of wild Fritillaria przewalskii Maxim. in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. Front Microbiol 2023; 14:1070815. [PMID: 36876117 PMCID: PMC9981654 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1070815] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/15/2022] [Accepted: 02/01/2023] [Indexed: 02/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Introduction Fritillaria przewalskii Maxim. is a Chinese endemic species with high medicinal value distributed in the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau. F. przewalskii root-associated rhizosphere bacterial communities shaped by soil properties may maintain the stability of soil structure and regulate F. przewalskii growth, but the rhizosphere bacterial community structure of wild F. przewalskii from natural populations is not clear. Methods In the current study, soil samples from 12 sites within the natural range of wild F. przewalskii were collected to investigate the compositions of bacterial communities via high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes and multivariate statistical analysis combined with soil properties and plant phenotypic characteristics. Results Bacterial communities varied between rhizosphere and bulk soil, and also between sites. Co-occurrence networks were more complex in rhizosphere soil (1,169 edges) than in bulk soil (676 edges). There were differences in bacterial communities between regions, including diversity and composition. Proteobacteria (26.47-37.61%), Bacteroidetes (10.53-25.22%), and Acidobacteria (10.45-23.54%) were the dominant bacteria, and all are associated with nutrient cycling. In multivariate statistical analysis, both soil properties and plant phenotypic characteristics were significantly associated with the bacterial community (p < 0.05). Soil physicochemical properties accounted for most community differences, and pH was a key factor (p < 0.01). Interestingly, when the rhizosphere soil environment remained alkaline, the C and N contents were lowest, as was the biomass of the medicinal part bulb. This might relate to the specific distribution of genera, such as Pseudonocardia, Ohtaekwangia, Flavobacterium (relative abundance >0.01), which all have significantly correlated with the biomass of F. przewalskii (p < 0.05). Discussion F. przewalskii is evidently averse to alkaline soil with high potassium contents, but this requires future verification. The results of the present study may provide theoretical guidance and new insights for the cultivation and domestication of F. przewalskii.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhijia Cui
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.,Northwest Collaborative Innovation Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine Co-Constructed by Gansu Province & MOE of PRC, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Ran Li
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Fan Li
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Ling Jin
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.,Northwest Collaborative Innovation Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine Co-Constructed by Gansu Province & MOE of PRC, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Haixu Wu
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Chunya Cheng
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Yi Ma
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.,Northwest Collaborative Innovation Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine Co-Constructed by Gansu Province & MOE of PRC, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Zhenheng Wang
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.,Northwest Collaborative Innovation Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine Co-Constructed by Gansu Province & MOE of PRC, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
| | - Yuanyuan Wang
- College of Pharmacy, Gansu University of Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
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Sorouri B, Rodriguez CI, Gaut BS, Allison SD. Variation in Sphingomonas traits across habitats and phylogenetic clades. Front Microbiol 2023; 14:1146165. [PMID: 37138640 PMCID: PMC10150699 DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1146165] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2023] [Accepted: 03/29/2023] [Indexed: 05/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Whether microbes show habitat preferences is a fundamental question in microbial ecology. If different microbial lineages have distinct traits, those lineages may occur more frequently in habitats where their traits are advantageous. Sphingomonas is an ideal bacterial clade in which to investigate how habitat preference relates to traits because these bacteria inhabit diverse environments and hosts. Here we downloaded 440 publicly available Sphingomonas genomes, assigned them to habitats based on isolation source, and examined their phylogenetic relationships. We sought to address whether: (1) there is a relationship between Sphingomonas habitat and phylogeny, and (2) whether there is a phylogenetic correlation between key, genome-based traits and habitat preference. We hypothesized that Sphingomonas strains from similar habitats would cluster together in phylogenetic clades, and key traits that improve fitness in specific environments should correlate with habitat. Genome-based traits were categorized into the Y-A-S trait-based framework for high growth yield, resource acquisition, and stress tolerance. We selected 252 high quality genomes and constructed a phylogenetic tree with 12 well-defined clades based on an alignment of 404 core genes. Sphingomonas strains from the same habitat clustered together within the same clades, and strains within clades shared similar clusters of accessory genes. Additionally, key genome-based trait frequencies varied across habitats. We conclude that Sphingomonas gene content reflects habitat preference. This knowledge of how environment and host relate to phylogeny may also help with future functional predictions about Sphingomonas and facilitate applications in bioremediation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bahareh Sorouri
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States
- *Correspondence: Bahareh Sorouri,
| | - Cynthia I. Rodriguez
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States
| | - Brandon S. Gaut
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States
| | - Steven D. Allison
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States
- Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States
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