Synthetic phylogenetically diverse communities promote denitrification and stability

Min Zhou; Xiaotong Guan; Ting Deng; Ruiwen Hu; Lu Qian; Xueqin Yang; Bo Wu; Juan Li; Qiang He; Longfei Shu; Qingyun Yan; Zhili He

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2023.116184

Synthetic phylogenetically diverse communities promote denitrification and stability

Environ Res. 2023 Aug 15;231(Pt 2):116184. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.116184. Epub 2023 May 18.

Authors

Min Zhou¹, Xiaotong Guan¹, Ting Deng¹, Ruiwen Hu¹, Lu Qian¹, Xueqin Yang¹, Bo Wu¹, Juan Li², Qiang He³, Longfei Shu¹, Qingyun Yan⁴, Zhili He⁵

Affiliations

¹ Environmental Microbiomics Research Center, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), State Key Laboratory for Biocontrol, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, China.
² College of Agronomy, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China.
³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA.
⁴ Environmental Microbiomics Research Center, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), State Key Laboratory for Biocontrol, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, China. Electronic address: yanqingyun@sml-zhuhai.cn.
⁵ Environmental Microbiomics Research Center, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), State Key Laboratory for Biocontrol, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, China; College of Agronomy, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China. Electronic address: hezhili@sml-zhuhai.cn.

PMID: 37207729
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2023.116184

Abstract

Denitrification is an important process of the global nitrogen cycle as some of its intermediates are environmentally important or related to global warming. However, how the phylogenetic diversity of denitrifying communities affects their denitrification rates and temporal stability remains unclear. Here we selected denitrifiers based on their phylogenetic distance to construct two groups of synthetic denitrifying communities: one closely related (CR) group with all strains from the genus Shewanella and the other distantly related (DR) group with all constituents from different genera. All synthetic denitrifying communities (SDCs) were experimentally evolved for 200 generations. The results showed that high phylogenetic diversity followed by experimental evolution promoted the function and stability of synthetic denitrifying communities. Specifically, the productivity and denitrification rates were significantly (P < 0.05) higher with Paracocus denitrificans as the dominant species (since the 50th generation) in the DR community than those in the CR community. The DR community also showed significantly (t = 7.119, df = 10, P < 0.001) higher stability through overyielding and asynchrony of species fluctuations, and showed more complementarity than the CR group during the experimental evolution. This study has important implications for applying synthetic communities to remediate environmental problems and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Keywords: Community function; Community stability; Denitrification; Phylogenetic diversity; Species interaction; Synthetic microbial community.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Denitrification*
Phylogeny