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The Microbiomes in Lichen and Moss Biocrust Contribute Differently to Carbon and Nitrogen Cycles in Arid Ecosystems

  • Soil Microbiology
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Abstract

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are distributed in arid and semiarid regions across the globe. Microorganisms are an essential component in biocrusts. They add and accelerate critical biochemical processes. However, little is known about the functional genes and metabolic processes of microbiomes in lichen and moss biocrust. This study used shotgun metagenomic sequencing to compare the microbiomes of lichen-dominated and moss-dominated biocrust and reveal the microbial genes and metabolic pathways involved in carbon and nitrogen cycling. The results showed that Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Acidobacteria were more abundant in moss biocrust than lichen biocrust, while Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria were more abundant in lichen biocrust than moss biocrust. The relative abundance of carbohydrate-active enzymes and enzymes associated with carbon and nitrogen metabolism differed significantly between microbiomes of the two biocrust types. However, in the microbial communities of both biocrust types, respiration pathways dominated over carbon fixation pathways. The genes encoding carbon monoxide dehydrogenase were more abundant than those encoding ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCo) involved in carbon fixation. Similarly, metabolic N-pathway diversity was dominated by nitrogen reduction, followed by denitrification, with nitrogen fixation the lowest proportion. Gene diversity involved in N cycling differed between the microbiomes of the two biocrust types. Assimilatory nitrate reduction genes had higher relative abundance in lichen biocrust, whereas dissimilatory nitrate reduction genes had higher relative abundance in moss biocrust. As dissolved organic carbon and soil organic carbon are considered the main drivers of the community structure in the microbiome of biocrust, these results indicate that biocrust type has a pivotal role in microbial diversity and related biogeochemical cycling.

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Data Availability

All data is publicly available on the SRA database under BioProject PRJNA793166.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all people involved in the maintenance of the experiment. This research was funded by the National Natural Scientific Foundation of China (41971131) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFE0203400, 2017YFC0504703).

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Author notes

  1. Chang Tian and Jingwen Pang are parallel first authors and contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, China

    Chang Tian, Jingwen Pang, Chongfeng Bu, Yahong Li & Qi Guo

  2. Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, CAS & MWR, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, China

    Chang Tian & Chongfeng Bu

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Chang Tian

  4. College of Water Resources and Architectural Engineering, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, China

    Shufang Wu

  5. Sichuan Expressway Construction & Development Group Co., Ltd, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610041, China

    Hao Bai

  6. The UWA Institute of Agriculture and School of Agriculture & Environment, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 6001, Australia

    Kadambot H. M. Siddique

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  1. Chang Tian
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Contributions

Chongfeng Bu conceived the ideas and designed the methodology; Chang Tian, Jingwen Pang, Yahong Li, and Qi Guo collected the data; Chang Tian and Jingwen Pang analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript; Shufang Wu, Hao Bai, and Kadambot H.M. Siddique contributed critically to the manuscript. All authors gave final approval for publication.

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Correspondence to Chongfeng Bu.

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Tian, C., Pang, J., Bu, C. et al. The Microbiomes in Lichen and Moss Biocrust Contribute Differently to Carbon and Nitrogen Cycles in Arid Ecosystems. Microb Ecol 86, 497–508 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-022-02077-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-022-02077-7

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