Research reveals the role of bacteria in the global carbon cycle

Ithaca, New York - Researchers at Cornell University have developed an innovative technology that can track microorganisms and understand the various ways they process soil carbon.

This is important because it is well known that soil bacteria are difficult to study, even though they are the key to the health of our biosphere

Improving our understanding of the role of bacteria in the carbon cycle will ultimately help climate model builders make more accurate predictions

, "Multi-Substrate DNA stable isotope survey reveals the structure of guild bacteria regulating soil carbon cycle," published on November 19 in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"

Samuel Barnett, a PhD student in the Barkley Lab, is the first author of the paper

"We want to use this information to study what the objects themselves are doing and why they are doing it," Barkley said

Buckley said that one of the biggest uncertainties in computer models that predict the carbon cycle and climate change is that people don’t know much about how soil bacteria work and affect the carbon in the soil

He said: "By understanding what microorganisms are doing, we hope to better predict what will happen in the future carbon cycle, and then make better decisions on how to manage our soil

Soil microorganisms are so small that they are difficult to observe on the ground, so scientists do not know enough about their needs for growth in the laboratory, which in turn makes them almost impossible to study

In this paper, Buckley and his colleagues used stable isotope and high-throughput DNA sequencing to identify different types of bacteria and track how each type of bacteria consumes carbon

Barkley said: "This method allows us to identify isotope-labeled DNA and find out which microorganisms eat each different type of carbon

They found that microorganisms have different strategies for absorbing carbon

Barkley said: "The more we know, the better we can predict changes in soil carbon

In future work, the team will also investigate whether some guilds like different habitats, such as forests or farmland, and the impact of soil pH on microbial communities

This research was funded by the U.

Magazine

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.