Extracellular enzyme stoichiometry reveals carbon and nitrogen limitations closely linked to bacterial communities in China's largest saline lake.

ABSTRACT: Saline lakes possess substantial carbon storage and play essential roles in global carbon cycling. Benthic microorganisms mine and decompose sediment organic matter via extracellular enzymes to acquire limiting nutrients and thus meet their element budgets, which ultimately causes variations in sediment carbon storage. However, current knowledge about microbial nutrient limitation and the associated organic carbon changes especially in saline lake remains elusive. Therefore, we took Qinghai Lake, the largest saline lake of China, as an example to identify the patterns and drivers of microbial metabolic limitations quantified by the vector analyses of extracellular enzyme stoichiometry. Benthic microorganisms were dominantly colimited by carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). Such microbial C limitat

SUBMITTER: Zhang W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9532593 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature