Global biogeography of microbial nitrogen-cycling traits in soil

Microorganisms drive much of the Earth's nitrogen (N) cycle, but we still lack a global overview of the abundance and composition of the microorganisms carrying out soil N processes. To address this gap, we characterized the biogeography of microbial N traits, defined as eight N-cycling pathways, using publically available soil metagenomes. The relative frequency of N pathways varied consistently across soils, such that the frequencies of the individual N pathways were positively correlated across the soil samples. Habitat type, soil carbon, and soil N largely explained the total N pathway frequency in a sample. In contrast, we could not identify major drivers of the taxonomic composition of the N functional…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: DE-PS02-09ER09-25, DE-PS02-09ER0-25
• OO
  Office of Science
• BA
  Biological and Environmental Research

  Award: DE-PS02-09ER09-25