Competitive Exclusion and Metabolic Dependency among Microorganisms Structure the Cellulose Economy of an Agricultural Soil.

ABSTRACT: Microorganisms that degrade cellulose utilize extracellular reactions that yield free by-products which can promote interactions with noncellulolytic organisms. We hypothesized that these interactions determine the ecological and physiological traits governing the fate of cellulosic carbon (C) in soil. We performed comparative genomics with genome bins from a shotgun metagenomic-stable isotope probing experiment to characterize the attributes of cellulolytic and noncellulolytic taxa accessing 13C from cellulose. We hypothesized that cellulolytic taxa would exhibit competitive traits that limit access, while noncellulolytic taxa would display greater metabolic dependency, such as signatures of adaptive gene loss. We tested our hypotheses by evaluating genomic traits indicative of competitiv

SUBMITTER: Wilhelm RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8545098 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature