title: Planting increases the abundance and structure complexity of soil core functional genes relevant to carbon and nitrogen cycling.
abstract: Plants have an important impact on soil microbial communities and their functions. However, how plants determine the microbial composition and network interactions is still poorly understood. During a four-year field experiment, we investigated the functional gene composition of three types of soils (Phaeozem, Cambisols and Acrisol) under maize planting and bare fallow regimes located in cold temperate, warm temperate and subtropical regions, respectively. The core genes were identified using high-throughput functional gene microarray (GeoChip 3.0), and functional molecular ecological networks (fMENs) were subsequently developed with the random matrix theory (RMT)-based conceptual framework. Our results demonstrated that planting significantly (P < 0.05) increased the gene alpha-diversity in terms of richness and Shannon - Simpson's indexes for all three types of soils and 83.5% of microbial alpha-diversity can be explained by the plant factor. Moreover, planting had significant impacts on the microbial community structure and the network interactions of the microbial communities. The calculated network complexity was higher under maize planting than under bare fallow regimes. The increase of the functional genes led to an increase in both soil respiration and nitrification potential with maize planting, indicating that changes in the soil microbial communities and network interactions influenced ecological functioning.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 71 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China.|Ningbo Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 19 Dehou Street, Ningbo 315040, China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 71 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China.
authors.forename: Yuting
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 71 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China.
authors.forename: Yuji
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Yunfeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
authors.forename: Jinbo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.|Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.|Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Jizhong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 71 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D001105:Archaea / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D044822:Biodiversity; D002681:China; D017753:Ecosystem; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D064307:Microbiota / Q000235:genetics*; D009584:Nitrogen; D058458:Nitrogen Cycle / Q000502:physiology*; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry*; D012988:Soil Microbiology; D003313:Zea mays / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D012987:Soil; D009584:Nitrogen