Institute of Desertification Studies, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, China.
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
NPJ Biofilms Microbiomes. 2021 Feb 8;7(1):17. doi: 10.1038/s41522-021-00187-7.
Climate warming is known to impact ecosystem composition and functioning. However, it remains largely unclear how soil microbial communities respond to long-term, moderate warming. In this study, we used Illumina sequencing and microarrays (GeoChip 5.0) to analyze taxonomic and functional gene compositions of the soil microbial community after 14 years of warming (at 0.8-1.0 °C for 10 years and then 1.5-2.0 °C for 4 years) in a Californian grassland. Long-term warming had no detectable effect on the taxonomic composition of soil bacterial community, nor on any plant or abiotic soil variables. In contrast, functional gene compositions differed between warming and control for bacterial, archaeal, and fungal communities. Functional genes associated with labile carbon (C) degradation increased in relative abundance in the warming treatment, whereas those associated with recalcitrant C degradation decreased. A number of functional genes associated with nitrogen (N) cycling (e.g., denitrifying genes encoding nitrate-, nitrite-, and nitrous oxidereductases) decreased, whereas nifH gene encoding nitrogenase increased in the warming treatment. These results suggest that microbial functional potentials are more sensitive to long-term moderate warming than the taxonomic composition of microbial community.
气候变暖已知会影响生态系统的组成和功能。然而，土壤微生物群落如何对长期、适度的变暖做出响应在很大程度上仍不清楚。在这项研究中，我们使用 Illumina 测序和微阵列（GeoChip 5.0）分析了加利福尼亚草原上 14 年变暖（10 年升温 0.8-1.0°C，然后升温 4 年 1.5-2.0°C）后土壤微生物群落的分类和功能基因组成。长期变暖对土壤细菌群落的分类组成没有明显影响，也没有对任何植物或非生物土壤变量产生影响。相比之下，在细菌、古菌和真菌群落中，功能基因组成在变暖处理和对照之间存在差异。与不稳定碳 (C) 降解相关的功能基因在变暖处理中相对丰度增加，而与难降解 C 降解相关的功能基因减少。与氮 (N) 循环相关的一些功能基因（例如，编码硝酸盐、亚硝酸盐和亚硝态氧化还原酶的反硝化基因）减少，而编码固氮酶的 nifH 基因在变暖处理中增加。这些结果表明，微生物功能潜力对长期适度变暖比微生物群落的分类组成更敏感。
