Prokaryote growth factor cross-feeding as a driver of soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes.
Soil microbial biodiversity is associated with a number of beneficial ecosystem processes, e.g. plant productivity, biogeochemical cycling of macro-elements and resistance to perturbation. Therefore, the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that increase biodiversity are worth consideration.
Over evolutionary timescales, selection favours Prokaryotes that undergo gene-loss events as this reduces the burden of investing protein synthesis and energy into general cell maintenance. Gene-loss occurs despite the potential for a taxon to be locked into obligate cross-feeding interactions with other Prokaryotes or Eukaryote hosts, e.g. plant rhizosphere. It is possible for mutualistic interactions to develop, whereby two auxotrophs provide complementary growth factors to each other as the ‘Division of Labour Hypothesis’, or commensal interactions where one taxon adopts the burden of producing essential growth factors for auxotrophs as the ‘Black Queen Hypothesis’. We predict that, not only do such interactions promote biodiversity by establishing the need for co-existence, but that auxotrophic taxa alternatively invest protein synthesis and energy into performing beneficial ecosystem processes.
With a metagenomics approach that considers Prokaryotes at both community and individual (i.e. genome) scales, this project will investigate how auxotrophy-dependent cross-feeding interactions support soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes. These outcomes will improve our fundamental understanding of the factors that promote biodiversity in soil microbial communities, while also investigating how gene-loss events within individual taxa ultimately have consequences for processes such as plant productivity and biogeochemical cycling.
Project Management Dr. Damien Finn
Duration 2023-2026
Funding Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG