OPENAIRE OpenAire bioRxiv Sygma Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) UnpayWall NERC Open Research Archive DOAJ Crossref Microsoft Academic Graph Europe PubMed Central PubMed Central European Union Open Data Portal https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/117887v1.full.pdf https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/mBio.00799-17 https://doi.org/2164/15058 mBio Open Access 2017-03-19 2017-07-05 2017-03-18 Abstract<p>Environmental factors relating to soil pH are widely known to be important in structuring soil bacterial communities, yet the relationship between taxonomic community composition and functional diversity remains to be determined. Here, we analyze geographically distributed soils spanning a wide pH gradient and assess the functional gene capacity within those communities using whole genome metagenomics. Low pH soils consistently had fewer taxa (lower alpha and gamma diversity), but only marginal reductions in functional alpha diversity and equivalent functional gamma diversity. However, coherent changes in the relative abundances of annotated genes between pH classes were identified; with functional profiles clustering according to pH independent of geography. Differences in gene abundances were found to reflect survival and nutrient acquisition strategies, with organic-rich acidic soils harboring a greater abundance of cation efflux pumps, C and N direct fixation systems and fermentation pathways indicative of anaerobiosis. Conversely, high pH soils possessed more direct transporter-mediated mechanisms for organic C and N substrate acquisition. These findings show that bacterial functional versatility may not be constrained by taxonomy, and we further identify the range of physiological adaptations required to exist in soils of varying nutrient availability and edaphic conditions.</p Q Science 0301 basic medicine 330 Supplementary Data ecophysiology Ecophysiology NE/E006353/1 Bacterial Physiological Phenomena Microbiology Soil 03 medical and health sciences Virology European Commission Ecosystem Phylogeny Soil Microbiology 2. Zero hunger 655240 metagenomics 0303 health sciences Bacteria Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Q NE/M017125/1 Biodiversity Hydrogen-Ion Concentration 15. Life on land Adaptation, Physiological soil microbiology QR1-502 United Kingdom 3. Good health Soil microbiology Metagenomics Genome, Bacterial Research Article Malik, Ashish A., Thomson, Bruce C., Whiteley, Andrew S., Bailey, Mark, Griffiths, Robert I., 2017-03-18 journalpaper Abstract<p>Environmental factors relating to soil pH are widely known to be important in structuring soil bacterial communities, yet the relationship between taxonomic community composition and functional diversity remains to be determined. Here, we analyze geographically distributed soils spanning a wide pH gradient and assess the functional gene capacity within those communities using whole genome metagenomics. Low pH soils consistently had fewer taxa (lower alpha and gamma diversity), but only marginal reductions in functional alpha diversity and equivalent functional gamma diversity. However, coherent changes in the relative abundances of annotated genes between pH classes were identified; with functional profiles clustering according to pH independent of geography. Differences in gene abundances were found to reflect survival and nutrient acquisition strategies, with organic-rich acidic soils harboring a greater abundance of cation efflux pumps, C and N direct fixation systems and fermentation pathways indicative of anaerobiosis. Conversely, high pH soils possessed more direct transporter-mediated mechanisms for organic C and N substrate acquisition. These findings show that bacterial functional versatility may not be constrained by taxonomy, and we further identify the range of physiological adaptations required to exist in soils of varying nutrient availability and edaphic conditions.</p Bacterial physiological adaptations to contrasting edaphic conditions identified using landscape scale metagenomics 2164/15058 655240