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Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils
The Antarctic continent is widely considered to be one of the most hostile biological habitats on Earth. Despite extreme environmental conditions, the ice-free areas of the continent, which constitute some 0.44% of the total continental land area, harbour substantial and diverse communities of macro...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7564152/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32967081 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8091442 |
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author | Ortiz, Max Bosch, Jason Coclet, Clément Johnson, Jenny Lebre, Pedro Salawu-Rotimi, Adeola Vikram, Surendra Makhalanyane, Thulani Cowan, Don |
author_facet | Ortiz, Max Bosch, Jason Coclet, Clément Johnson, Jenny Lebre, Pedro Salawu-Rotimi, Adeola Vikram, Surendra Makhalanyane, Thulani Cowan, Don |
author_sort | Ortiz, Max |
collection | PubMed |
description | The Antarctic continent is widely considered to be one of the most hostile biological habitats on Earth. Despite extreme environmental conditions, the ice-free areas of the continent, which constitute some 0.44% of the total continental land area, harbour substantial and diverse communities of macro-organisms and especially microorganisms, particularly in the more “hospitable” maritime regions. In the more extreme non-maritime regions, exemplified by the McMurdo Dry Valleys of South Victoria Land, nutrient cycling and ecosystem servicing processes in soils are largely driven by microbial communities. Nitrogen turnover is a cornerstone of ecosystem servicing. In Antarctic continental soils, specifically those lacking macrophytes, cold-active free-living diazotrophic microorganisms, particularly Cyanobacteria, are keystone taxa. The diazotrophs are complemented by heterotrophic bacterial and archaeal taxa which show the genetic capacity to perform elements of the entire N cycle, including nitrification processes such as the anammox reaction. Here, we review the current literature on nitrogen cycling genes, taxa, processes and rates from studies of Antarctic soils. In particular, we highlight the current gaps in our knowledge of the scale and contribution of these processes in south polar soils as critical data to underpin viable predictions of how such processes may alter under the impacts of future climate change. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7564152 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75641522020-10-26 Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils Ortiz, Max Bosch, Jason Coclet, Clément Johnson, Jenny Lebre, Pedro Salawu-Rotimi, Adeola Vikram, Surendra Makhalanyane, Thulani Cowan, Don Microorganisms Review The Antarctic continent is widely considered to be one of the most hostile biological habitats on Earth. Despite extreme environmental conditions, the ice-free areas of the continent, which constitute some 0.44% of the total continental land area, harbour substantial and diverse communities of macro-organisms and especially microorganisms, particularly in the more “hospitable” maritime regions. In the more extreme non-maritime regions, exemplified by the McMurdo Dry Valleys of South Victoria Land, nutrient cycling and ecosystem servicing processes in soils are largely driven by microbial communities. Nitrogen turnover is a cornerstone of ecosystem servicing. In Antarctic continental soils, specifically those lacking macrophytes, cold-active free-living diazotrophic microorganisms, particularly Cyanobacteria, are keystone taxa. The diazotrophs are complemented by heterotrophic bacterial and archaeal taxa which show the genetic capacity to perform elements of the entire N cycle, including nitrification processes such as the anammox reaction. Here, we review the current literature on nitrogen cycling genes, taxa, processes and rates from studies of Antarctic soils. In particular, we highlight the current gaps in our knowledge of the scale and contribution of these processes in south polar soils as critical data to underpin viable predictions of how such processes may alter under the impacts of future climate change. MDPI 2020-09-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7564152/ /pubmed/32967081 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8091442 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Review Ortiz, Max Bosch, Jason Coclet, Clément Johnson, Jenny Lebre, Pedro Salawu-Rotimi, Adeola Vikram, Surendra Makhalanyane, Thulani Cowan, Don Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils |
title | Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils |
title_full | Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils |
title_fullStr | Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils |
title_full_unstemmed | Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils |
title_short | Microbial Nitrogen Cycling in Antarctic Soils |
title_sort | microbial nitrogen cycling in antarctic soils |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7564152/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32967081 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8091442 |
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