Adjustment of microbial nitrogen use efficiency to carbon:nitrogen imbalances regulates soil nitrogen cycling

By M. Mooshammer, W. Wanek, I. Hämmerle, Lucia Fuchslueger, F. Hofhansl, Anna Knoltsch, J. Schnecker, Mounir Takriti, M. Watzka, B. Wild and 3 more. Nature Communications, 2014

871 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Microbial nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) describes the partitioning of organic N taken up between growth and the release of inorganic N to the environment (that is, N mineralization), and is thus central to our understanding of N cycling. Here we report empirical evidence that microbial decomposer communities in soil and plant litter regulate their NUE. We find that microbes retain most immobilized organic N (high NUE), when they are N limited, resulting in low N mineralization. However, when the metabolic control of microbial decomposers switches from N to C limitation, they release an increasing fraction of organic N as ammonium (low NUE). We conclude that the regulation of NUE is an essential strategy of microbial communities to cope with resource imbalances, independent of the regulation of microbial carbon use efficiency, with significant effects on terrestrial N cycling. Nitrogen availability in soils is predominantly controlled by microorganisms, yet our understanding of their organic nitrogen use is limited. Mooshammer et al.show that microbial nitrogen use efficiency is dependent on resource stoichiometry and substrate type.

Subfields: Ecology, Plant Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fe3b118864d35bc0c5b0127f26920a96fefff46c

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Citations in the corpus

Stoichiometry of microbial carbon use efficiency in soils (2016, background): “As examples, Muoginot et al. (2014) isolated bacteria and fungi from decomposing grass litter.”
Soil pH Determines Microbial Diversity and Composition in the Park Grass Experiment (2014, background): “the changes in nitrogen and carbon use efficiencies in the terrestrial microbial communities in order to maintain microbial elemental homeostasis [37].”
Linking microbial communities, functional genes and nitrogen-cycling processes in forest floors under four tree species (2016, positive): “The proportion of 351 mineralized N taken up by microbial biomass, rather than the gross mineralization rate, appeared 352 to be the primary driver of N release, consistent with conclusions of Mooshammer et al. (2014).”
Bacterial rather than fungal community composition is associated with microbial activities and nutrient-use efficiencies in a paddy soil with short-term organic amendments (2018, methodology): “Microbes regulate their CUE and NUE according to the nutrient condition (Mooshammer et al. 2014; Zechmeister-Boltenstern et al. 2016), which resulted in low CUE and high NUE in this study.”