Soil Bacteria Metabolizes Carbon via Many Mechanisms in New Study

Much of what scientists believe about soil metabolism might be incorrect.

According to new research, bacteria in various soils employ distinct metabolic pathways to consume nutrients, respire and proliferate.

The work challenges long-held notions in soil ecology and demands greater research and higher-resolution technologies to be used in what has hitherto been a black box for the profession.

Soil microbes to stabilize carbon

(Photo : Claudio Santana/Getty Images)

As ecologists, they don't usually think about soil metabolism in terms of pathways, according to Paul Dijkstra, research professor of biology at NAU's Center for Ecosystem Science and Society and the study's primary author.

However, researchers now also have proof that metabolism varies by soil, as per ScienceDaily.

Thr experts discovered that biochemistry, especially the metabolic pathways that soil microbes pick, affects a lot, according to co-author Michaela Dippold, a professor of geo-biosphere interactions at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Their profession urgently requires the development of effective experimental methodologies for quantifying maintenance energy requirements and fundamental respiration.

It's a problem toward which long-term soil ecology study must rise.

Dijkstra modified a technique from basic and practical microbiology that is used to stimulate metabolism for individual microbiota under a laboratory environment as part of his team's attempt to make soil ecology a more specialized, quantitatively rigorous discipline.

This method, known as 13C metabolic flow analysis, entails tagging the carbon atoms at each point in a molecule of glucose so that one may be identified from the others.

The researchers can determine how much CO2 was created from each carbon atom in the molecule by adding the tagged glucose to a soil sample.

The position-specific CO2 is a hint to the metabolic pathway pursued, similar to how a single letter disclosed on the game show "Wheel of Fortune" might indicate a whole sentence.

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Could soil microbes combat the climate crisis?

Most of the emphasis on mitigating climate change is on lowering anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, which continue to rise.

The connection and interchange of carbon in the atmosphere with Earth's surfaces such as seas, lakes, and wetlands, often known as the global carbon cycle, is another factor to consider.

These habitats not only contribute to the global carbon cycle but are also sensitive to rising carbon temperatures and concentrations caused by climate change, as per Open Access Government.

To address our current climate problem, people must plug gaps in the carbon cycle while also developing new techniques to remove carbon-based greenhouse gases from the environment.

Soil bacteria and their various metabolic activity may hold the key to resolving the climate issue

There are huge microbial communities with highly different metabolisms inside soils and sediments.

Extracellular electron uptake (EEU), for example, allows some microorganisms to get radicals by oxidation minerals in the surroundings.

Some EEU-capable microorganisms are also photoautotrophs (pEEU), capable of converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic carbon required for growth via photosynthesis.

In other words, these bacteria have the ability to remove CO2 from the atmosphere; however, the influence of their metabolism on the carbon cycle is yet unknown.

These bacteria' metabolic capabilities also include carbon storage systems, which allow some microbes to store carbon internally as a survival tactic when growth conditions become restrictive.

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