Bacterial age distribution in soil - Generational gaps in adjacent hot and cold spots.

ABSTRACT: Resource patchiness and aqueous phase fragmentation in soil may induce large differences local growth conditions at submillimeter scales. These are translated to vast differences in bacterial age from cells dividing every thirty minutes in close proximity to plant roots to very old cells experiencing negligible growth in adjacent nutrient poor patches. In this study, we link bacterial population demographics with localized soil and hydration conditions to predict emerging generation time distributions and estimate mean bacterial cell ages using mechanistic and heuristic models of bacterial life in soil. Results show heavy-tailed distributions of generation times that resemble a power law for certain conditions, suggesting that we may find bacterial cells of vastly different ages living sid

SUBMITTER: Borer B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8906644 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature