Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 345, Issue 6197, Pages 676-679Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1254070
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Funding
- European Research Council (ERC) [MASEM 242635]
- ERC [StG 306933]
- University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- NSF [EF-0541797]
- State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University, China
- German Federal State Nordrhein-Westfalen
- Max Planck Society
- Div Of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1202648] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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In the biogeochemical nitrogen cycle, microbial respiration processes compete for nitrate as an electron acceptor. Denitrification converts nitrate into nitrogenous gas and thus removes fixed nitrogen from the biosphere, whereas ammonification converts nitrate into ammonium, which is directly reusable by primary producers. We combined multiple parallel long-term incubations of marine microbial nitrate-respiring communities with isotope labeling and metagenomics to unravel how specific environmental conditions select for either process. Microbial generation time, supply of nitrite relative to nitrate, and the carbon/nitrogen ratio were identified as key environmental controls that determine whether nitrite will be reduced to nitrogenous gas or ammonium. Our results define the microbial ecophysiology of a biogeochemical feedback loop that is key to global change, eutrophication, and wastewater treatment.
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