Project description:Roots were collected from young trees outplanted in three regions in Germany (Schorfheide, Swabian Alb, Hainich) and used for RNA extraction. In each region four plots were sampled. Two plants used from each plot. The RNA of the plants per plot was pooled. Four technical replicates were prepared.
Project description:Groundwater-derived microorganisms are known to play an important role in biogeochemical C, S and N cycling. Thereby, the presence and majorly the activity of microorganisms in aquifers affect enormously the nutrient cycling. However, the diversity and their functional capability in natural aquifers are still rare and therefore a better knowledge of the core microbial communities is urgently needed. Metaproteome analysis was applied to characterize the repertoire of microbes in the depth and to identify the key drivers of major biogeochemical processes. Therefore, 1000 L water from the aquifer was sampled by filtration on 0.3 µm glass filters. After protein extraction, proteolytic cleavage and mass spectrometric analysis (Ultimate 3000 nanoRSLC coupled to Q Exactive HF instrument), 3808 protein groups (2371 proteins with ≥2 peptides) were identified from 13,204 peptides. The findings of our study have broad implications for the understanding of aquifer cycling’s which finally leads to a greatly improved understanding of the ecosystem services provided by the microbial communities present in aquifers. In the future, functional results would allow to monitor and to assess pollution effects which would beneficially assist groundwater resource management.
Project description:The rate, timing, and mode of species dispersal is recognized as a key driver of the structure and function of communities of macroorganisms, and may be one ecological process that determines the diversity of microbiomes. Many previous studies have quantified the modes and mechanisms of bacterial motility using monocultures of a few model bacterial species. But most microbes live in multispecies microbial communities, where direct interactions between microbes may inhibit or facilitate dispersal through a number of physical (e.g., hydrodynamic) and biological (e.g., chemotaxis) mechanisms, which remain largely unexplored. Using cheese rinds as a model microbiome, we demonstrate that physical networks created by filamentous fungi can impact the extent of small-scale bacterial dispersal and can shape the composition of microbiomes. From the cheese rind of Saint Nectaire, we serendipitously observed the bacterium Serratia proteamaculans actively spreads on networks formed by the fungus Mucor. By experimentally recreating these pairwise interactions in the lab, we show that Serratia spreads on actively growing and previously established fungal networks. The extent of symbiotic dispersal is dependent on the fungal network: diffuse and fast-growing Mucor networks provide the greatest dispersal facilitation of the Serratia species, while dense and slow-growing Penicillium networks provide limited dispersal facilitation. Fungal-mediated dispersal occurs in closely related Serratia species isolated from other environments, suggesting that this bacterial-fungal interaction is widespread in nature. Both RNA-seq and transposon mutagenesis point to specific molecular mechanisms that play key roles in this bacterial-fungal interaction, including chitin utilization and flagellin biosynthesis. By manipulating the presence and type of fungal networks in multispecies communities, we provide the first evidence that fungal networks shape the composition of bacterial communities, with Mucor networks shifting experimental bacterial communities to complete dominance by motile Proteobacteria. Collectively, our work demonstrates that these strong biophysical interactions between bacterial and fungi can have community-level consequences and may be operating in many other microbiomes.