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Microbial Engines: How Bacteria and Archaea Drive Global Carbon, Nitrogen, and Sulfur Cycles
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Researchers synthesized how microplastic pollution — alongside climate change and nutrient overloading — disrupts the microbial communities that drive Earth's carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles, reducing diazotroph diversity and altering greenhouse gas fluxes in ways that current biogeochemical models struggle to capture.
This extensive technical review provides a detailed examination of how bacteria and archaea function as the primary engines of Earth's biogeochemical cycles. Microorganisms mediate the transformation and movement of essential elements, particularly carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur, between the biosphere and abiotic compartments. The article outlines key metabolic pathways, including diverse carbon fixation mechanisms, methanogenesis, nitrification, denitrification, and complex sulfur redox reactions. A major highlight is the exploration of novel metabolisms like MISO, where microbes couple sulfide oxidation directly to iron oxide reduction, fundamentally altering our understanding of anaerobic respiration and elemental coupling. To study these complex processes, researchers employ a sophisticated toolkit of culture-independent methodologies. Techniques such as metagenomics and metatranscriptomics reveal the genetic potential and active expression of microbial communities, while stable isotope probing and nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry directly link specific taxa to their metabolic functions. The text also details the application of CRISPR gene editing and isotopic fingerprinting to trace methane origins and metabolic fluxes. The review critically examines the impact of anthropogenic stressors on these microbial engines. Climate change, microplastic pollution, and nutrient imbalances are shown to disrupt microbial community structure and function, leading to reduced diazotroph diversity, altered greenhouse gas emissions, and severe coastal eutrophication. In response to these challenges, the article explores the potential of microbial community engineering and synthetic microbiomes for advanced bioremediation, utilizing synergistic microbial interactions to detoxify environments. Finally, the document addresses the significant challenge of integrating immense microbial complexity into predictive biogeochemical models. Overcoming issues of scale, functional redundancy, and unculturable rare biosphere taxa requires standardized multi-omics data and mechanistic modeling. Ultimately, understanding and harnessing these microbial processes is essential for environmental management, climate change mitigation, and the development of sustainable biotechnologies. Source: https://www.microecosci.com/posts/microbial-engines-how-bacteria-and-archaea-drive-global-carbon-nitrogen-and-sulfur-cycles
More Papers Like This
Microbial Engines: How Bacteria and Archaea Drive Global Carbon, Nitrogen, and Sulfur Cycles
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This technical review details how bacteria and archaea drive Earth's carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles through diverse metabolic pathways, and examines how microplastic pollution disrupts microbial community structure—reducing diazotroph diversity and altering greenhouse gas fluxes—with implications for climate feedbacks and bioremediation strategies.
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This paper is not directly about microplastics; it is a broad review of microbial ecology covering microorganism roles in biogeochemical cycling of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and metals, and how advances in genomics have transformed our understanding of microbial community diversity and function.
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Researchers found that microplastics reshape aqueous carbon cycling by releasing chemical additives that inhibit autotrophic bacteria, promoting CO2 emissions, and stimulating microbial metabolic pathways that transform dissolved organic matter into more stable, less bioavailable forms.
Microplastics induced the differential responses of microbial-driven soil carbon and nitrogen cycles under warming
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Researchers examined how the combination of microplastic pollution and warming temperatures affects soil carbon and nitrogen cycling driven by microbial communities. The study found that microplastics altered microbial responses to warming in ways that disrupted both carbon decomposition and nitrogen transformation processes in soil.
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