title: Microbial regulation of the soil carbon cycle: evidence from gene-enzyme relationships.
abstract: A lack of empirical evidence for the microbial regulation of ecosystem processes, including carbon (C) degradation, hinders our ability to develop a framework to directly incorporate the genetic composition of microbial communities in the enzyme-driven Earth system models. Herein we evaluated the linkage between microbial functional genes and extracellular enzyme activity in soil samples collected across three geographical regions of Australia. We found a strong relationship between different functional genes and their corresponding enzyme activities. This relationship was maintained after considering microbial community structure, total C and soil pH using structural equation modelling. Results showed that the variations in the activity of enzymes involved in C degradation were predicted by the functional gene abundance of the soil microbial community (R2>0.90 in all cases). Our findings provide a strong framework for improved predictions on soil C dynamics that could be achieved by adopting a gene-centric approach incorporating the abundance of functional genes into process models.
authors.affiliation: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Pankaj
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Trivedi
authors.affiliation: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Delgado-Baquerizo
authors.affiliation: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Chanda
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Trivedi
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Hangwei
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Ian C
authors.initials: IC
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Thomas C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Jeffries
authors.affiliation: Institute for Environmental Genomics and Department of Botany and Microbiology, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA.|Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.|State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jizhong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.|Global Centre for Land Based Innovation, Western Sydney University, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Brajesh K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Singh
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D001419:Bacteria / Q000201:enzymology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000378:metabolism; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D002244:Carbon / Q000378:metabolism*; D057486:Carbon Cycle; D017753:Ecosystem; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry; D012988:Soil Microbiology
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D012987:Soil; D002244:Carbon