Carnivorous Nepenthes Pitchers with Less Acidic Fluid House Nitrogen-Fixing Bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Carnivorous pitcher plants are uniquely adapted to nitrogen limitation, using pitfall traps to acquire nutrients from insect prey. Pitcher plants in the genus Sarracenia may also use nitrogen fixed by bacteria inhabiting the aquatic microcosms of their pitchers. Here, we investigated whether species of a convergently evolved pitcher plant genus, Nepenthes, might also use bacterial nitrogen fixation as an alternative strategy for nitrogen capture. First, we constructed predicted metagenomes of pitcher organisms from three species of Singaporean Nepenthes using 16S rRNA sequence data and correlated predicted nifH abundances with metadata. Second, we used gene-specific primers to amplify and quantify the presence or absence of nifH directly from 102 environm

SUBMITTER: Bittleston LS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10370301 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature