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Marine toxin domoic acid alters nitrogen cycling in sediments
Summary
Researchers investigated how domoic acid, a neurotoxic algal toxin found in red tides, affects nitrogen cycling processes in marine sediments. The study found that domoic acid exposure altered microbial community function and metabolic pathways involved in nitrogen transformation, suggesting this toxin can disrupt important biogeochemical processes in coastal environments.
As a red tide algal toxin with intense neurotoxicity distributed worldwide, domoic acid (DA) has attracted increasing concerns. In this work, the integrative analysis of metagenome and metabolome are applied to investigate the impact of DA on nitrogen cycling in coastal sediments. Here we show that DA can act as a stressor to induce the variation of nitrogen (N) cycling by altering the abundance of functional genes and electron supply. Moreover, microecology theory revealed that DA can increase the role of deterministic assembly in microbial dynamic succession, resulting in the shift of niches and, ultimately, the alteration in N cycling. Notably, denitrification and Anammox, the important process for sediment N removal, are markedly limited by DA. Also, variation of N cycling implies the modification in cycles of other associated elements. Overall, DA is capable of ecosystem-level effects, which require further evaluation of its potential cascading effects.
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