The contrasting roles of nitric oxide drive microbial community organization as a function of oxygen presence.

ABSTRACT: Microbial assemblages are omnipresent in the biosphere, forming communities on the surfaces of roots and rocks and within living tissues. These communities can exhibit strikingly beautiful compositional structures, with certain members reproducibly occupying particular spatiotemporal microniches. Despite this reproducibility, we lack the ability to explain these spatial patterns. We hypothesize that certain spatial patterns in microbial communities may be explained by the exchange of redox-active metabolites whose biological function is sensitive to microenvironmental gradients. To test this, we developed a simple community consisting of synthetic Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains with a partitioned denitrification pathway: a strict consumer and strict producer of nitric oxide (NO), a key pat

SUBMITTER: Wilbert SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9772256 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature