State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
NPJ Biofilms Microbiomes. 2024 Nov 16;10(1):128. doi: 10.1038/s41522-024-00588-4.
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) mediated diversification is a critical force driving evolutionary and ecological processes. However, how HGT might relate to anthropogenic activity such as nitrogen addition, and its subsequent effect on functional diversity and cooccurrence networks remain unknown. Here we approach this knowledge gap by blending bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon and shotgun metagenomes from a platform of cessation of nitrogen additions and continuous nitrogen additions. We found that bacterial HGT events, functional genes, and virus diversities increased whereas bacterial taxonomic diversity decreased by nitrogen additions, resulting in a counterintuitive strong negative association between bacterial taxonomic and functional diversities. Nitrogen additions, especially the ceased one, complexified the cooccurrence network by increasing the contribution of vitamin B12 auxotrophic Acidobacteria, indicating cross-feeding. These findings advance our perceptions of the causes and consequences of the diversification process in community ecology.
水平基因转移（HGT）介导的多样化是驱动进化和生态过程的关键力量。然而，HGT 如何与人为活动（如氮添加）相关，以及它对功能多样性和共生网络的后续影响仍然未知。在这里，我们通过融合来自氮添加停止和持续氮添加平台的细菌 16S rRNA 基因扩增子和 shotgun 宏基因组来解决这一知识空白。我们发现，氮添加增加了细菌 HGT 事件、功能基因和病毒多样性，而细菌分类多样性则降低，导致细菌分类和功能多样性之间存在出人意料的强烈负相关。氮添加，特别是停止添加，通过增加钴胺素营养缺陷型 Acidobacteria 的贡献，使共生网络变得更加复杂，表明存在交叉喂养。这些发现提高了我们对群落生态学中多样化过程的原因和后果的认识。
