TY - JOUR
T1 - Exometabolite niche partitioning among sympatric soil bacteria
AU - Baran, Richard
AU - Brodie, Eoin L.
AU - Mayberry-Lewis, Jazmine
AU - Hummel, Eric
AU - Da Rocha, Ulisses Nunes
AU - Chakraborty, Romy
AU - Bowen, Benjamin P.
AU - Karaoz, Ulas
AU - Cadillo-Quiroz, Hinsby
AU - Garcia-Pichel, Ferran
AU - Northen, Trent R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory supported by the US Department of Energy Office of Science and the US Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research Early Career Program (award to T.R.N.) under contract number and DE-AC02-05CH11231. Analysis of the mesophilic soils was supported by the ENIGMA-Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies SFA supported by the Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, US Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We thank Rebecca Lau and Javier Navarro for technical help. We also acknowledge the contributions of Gracie Parish, Pablo Cruz-Ramos, Paul Solarez, Amilia Saunders and Veronica Russian Rojas as members of the MENTOR@ASU program who assisted HCQ in the culturing of the six heterotrophic bacteria.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/9/22
Y1 - 2015/9/22
N2 - Soils are arguably the most microbially diverse ecosystems. Physicochemical properties have been associated with the maintenance of this diversity. Yet, the role of microbial substrate specialization is largely unexplored since substrate utilization studies have focused on simple substrates, not the complex mixtures representative of the soil environment. Here we examine the exometabolite composition of desert biological soil crusts (biocrusts) and the substrate preferences of seven biocrust isolates. The biocrust's main primary producer releases a diverse array of metabolites, and isolates of physically associated taxa use unique subsets of the complex metabolite pool. Individual isolates use only 13-26% of available metabolites, with only 2 out of 470 used by all and 40% not used by any. An extension of this approach to a mesophilic soil environment also reveals high levels of microbial substrate specialization. These results suggest that exometabolite niche partitioning may be an important factor in the maintenance of microbial diversity.
AB - Soils are arguably the most microbially diverse ecosystems. Physicochemical properties have been associated with the maintenance of this diversity. Yet, the role of microbial substrate specialization is largely unexplored since substrate utilization studies have focused on simple substrates, not the complex mixtures representative of the soil environment. Here we examine the exometabolite composition of desert biological soil crusts (biocrusts) and the substrate preferences of seven biocrust isolates. The biocrust's main primary producer releases a diverse array of metabolites, and isolates of physically associated taxa use unique subsets of the complex metabolite pool. Individual isolates use only 13-26% of available metabolites, with only 2 out of 470 used by all and 40% not used by any. An extension of this approach to a mesophilic soil environment also reveals high levels of microbial substrate specialization. These results suggest that exometabolite niche partitioning may be an important factor in the maintenance of microbial diversity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84942337509&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84942337509&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/ncomms9289
DO - 10.1038/ncomms9289
M3 - Article
C2 - 26392107
AN - SCOPUS:84942337509
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 6
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
M1 - 8289
ER -