Resin acids play key roles in shaping microbial communities during degradation of spruce bark.

ABSTRACT: The bark is the outermost defense of trees against microbial attack, largely thanks to toxicity and prevalence of extractive compounds. Nevertheless, bark decomposes in nature, though by which species and mechanisms remains unknown. Here, we have followed the development of microbial enrichments growing on spruce bark over six months, by monitoring both chemical changes in the material and performing community and metagenomic analyses. Carbohydrate metabolism was unexpectedly limited, and instead a key activity was metabolism of extractives. Resin acid degradation was principally linked to community diversification with specific bacteria revealed to dominate the process. Metagenome-guided isolation facilitated the recovery of the dominant enrichment strain in pure culture, which represents

SUBMITTER: Ristinmaa AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10710418 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature