Linking meta-omics to the kinetics of denitrification intermediates reveals pH-dependent causes of N₂O emissions and nitrite accumulation in soil.

ABSTRACT: Soil pH is a key controller of denitrification. We analysed the metagenomics/transcriptomics and phenomics of two soils from a long-term liming experiment, SoilN (pH 6.8) and un-limed SoilA (pH 3.8). SoilA had severely delayed N₂O reduction despite early transcription of nosZ (mainly clade I), encoding N₂O reductase, by diverse denitrifiers. This shows that post-transcriptionally hampered maturation of the NosZ apo-protein at low pH is a generic phenomenon. Identification of transcript reads of several accessory genes in the nos cluster indicated that enzymes for NosZ maturation were present across a range of organisms, eliminating their absence as an explanation for the failure to produce a functional enzyme. nir transcript abundances (for NO₂^-

SUBMITTER: Frostegard A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8692524 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature