Microbial carbon use efficiency predicted from genome-scale metabolic models.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31395870.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-11488-z and PMC identifier 6687798.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Respiration by soil bacteria and fungi is one of the largest fluxes of carbon (C) from the land surface. Although this flux is a direct product of microbial metabolism, controls over metabolism and their responses to global change are a major uncertainty in the global C cycle. Here, we explore an in silico approach to predict bacterial C-use efficiency (CUE) for over 200 species using genome-specific constraint-based metabolic modeling. We find that potential CUE averages 0.62 ± 0.17 with a range of 0.22 to 0.98 across taxa and phylogenetic structuring at the subphylum levels. Potential CUE is negatively correlated with genome size, while taxa with larger genomes are able to access a wider variety of C substrates. Incorporating the range of CUE values reported here into a next-generation model of soil biogeochemistry suggests that these differences in physiology across microbial taxa can feed back on soil-C cycling.
Medical subject headings
- Bacteria
- Carbon Cycle
- Models, Biological
- Soil Microbiology