Project description:We established simple synthetic microbial communities in a microcosm model system to determine the mechanisms that underlay cross-feeding in microbial methane-consuming communities. Co-occurring strains from Lake Washington sediment were used that are involved in methane consumption, a methanotroph and two non-methanotrophic methylotrophs.
Project description:Xiangjiang River (Hunan, China) has been contaminated with heavy metal for several decades by surrounding factories. However, little is known about the influence of a gradient of heavy metal contamination on the diversity, structure of microbial functional gene in sediment. To deeply understand the impact of heavy metal contamination on microbial community, a comprehensive functional gene array (GeoChip 5.0) has been used to study the functional genes structure, composition, diversity and metabolic potential of microbial community from three heavy metal polluted sites of Xiangjiang River.
Project description:Xiangjiang River (Hunan, China) has been contaminated with heavy metal for several decades by surrounding factories. However, little is known about the influence of a gradient of heavy metal contamination on the diversity, structure of microbial functional gene in sediment. To deeply understand the impact of heavy metal contamination on microbial community, a comprehensive functional gene array (GeoChip 5.0) has been used to study the functional genes structure, composition, diversity and metabolic potential of microbial community from three heavy metal polluted sites of Xiangjiang River. Three groups of samples, A, B and C. Every group has 3 replicates.
Project description:Functional redundancy in bacterial communities is expected to allow microbial assemblages to survive perturbation by allowing continuity in function despite compositional changes in communities. Recent evidence suggests, however, that microbial communities change both composition and function as a result of disturbance. We present evidence for a third response: resistance. We examined microbial community response to perturbation caused by nutrient enrichment in salt marsh sediments using deep pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA and functional gene microarrays targeting the nirS gene. Composition of the microbial community, as demonstrated by both genes, was unaffected by significant variations in external nutrient supply, despite demonstrable and diverse nutrient–induced changes in many aspects of marsh ecology. The lack of response to external forcing demonstrates a remarkable uncoupling between microbial composition and ecosystem-level biogeochemical processes and suggests that sediment microbial communities are able to resist some forms of perturbation.
Project description:Functional redundancy in bacterial communities is expected to allow microbial assemblages to survive perturbation by allowing continuity in function despite compositional changes in communities. Recent evidence suggests, however, that microbial communities change both composition and function as a result of disturbance. We present evidence for a third response: resistance. We examined microbial community response to perturbation caused by nutrient enrichment in salt marsh sediments using deep pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA and functional gene microarrays targeting the nirS gene. Composition of the microbial community, as demonstrated by both genes, was unaffected by significant variations in external nutrient supply, despite demonstrable and diverse nutrient–induced changes in many aspects of marsh ecology. The lack of response to external forcing demonstrates a remarkable uncoupling between microbial composition and ecosystem-level biogeochemical processes and suggests that sediment microbial communities are able to resist some forms of perturbation. nirS gene diversity from two salt marsh experiments, GSM (4 treatments, 8 samples, duplicate arrays, four replicate blocks per array, 8 arrays per slide) and PIE (2 treatments, 16 samples, duplicate arrays four replicate blocks per array, 8 arrays per slide)
Project description:It remains challenging to study the viability and metabolic activity of microorganisms buried in ancient permafrost. We coupled aspartic acid racemization assay with metaproteomics to constraint the microbial activity of indigenous microbial community entrappped in permafrost sediment over 100 kyr ago.
Project description:Anthropogenic activities such as urbanization and agriculture can potentially pose a threat to neighboring freshwaters through nitrate and phosphorous contamination, which over time may lead to lake eutrophication. In such nitrogen-polluted environments, oxygen is depleted, and plants die and decompose. This enhances denitrifying microbes that respire under hypoxic/anoxic conditions by reducing nitrate instead of molecular oxygen and using plant remnants (lignocellulose) as carbon source. Microbial lignocellulose degradation has been well-studied for both aerobic- and anaerobic conditions; however, its degradation during denitrification remains largely unknown. Here we have applied a combination of gas kinetics and meta-omics techniques to enrich and analyze microbial communities from 10 eutrophic lakes to identify a set of core microbial metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) present in all the eutrophic lakes. We have further investigated their strategies and enzyme profiles for degrading lignocellulose under denitrifying conditions. We identified Pseudomonadota, Bacteroidota, Verrucomicrobiota, and Actinomycetota as the most abundant phyla and they were present in enrichments from all eutrophic lakes having a key role in denitrification and fermentation. Lignocellulose degradation was, however, dominated by species outside the core microbiome, i.e., there were differing key degraders between lakes, suggesting some level of lake-specialization. Among these we observed potential respiratory DNRA pathways, and they expressed a broad range of CAZymes targeting the various lignocellulose subfractions. Interestingly, many of the detected MAGs contained NO dismutases, enzymes postulated to convert NO to molecular oxygen and dinitrogen gas.