403: Mercury Modifies Microbe Metabolism

This episode: First episode of a climate-related arc! Considering
microorganisms is important when predicting the amount of carbon
coming from soil as temperature increases!


Download Episode (4.7 MB, 6.75 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Streptomyces virus Zemlya

News item

Takeaways
Soil as a whole has a big influence on the climate of the planet,
by enabling the communities of organisms that live in it to
interact and grow, taking up gases from the atmosphere and
putting others back in. Even aside from plants that grow in it,
the other organisms in soil can respire and break down compounds
to produce CO2, adding to what's in the atmosphere already.

There has long been observed a relationship between ambient
temperatures and this respiration in soil, such that more heat
means more activity and more gases released from the soil, but
today's study found that the microbial biomass in a given piece
of land can have a big effect on the temperature/respiration
relationship.

Journal Paper:
Čapek P, Starke R, Hofmockel KS, Bond-Lamberty B, Hess N. 2019.
Apparent temperature sensitivity of soil respiration can result
from temperature driven changes in microbial biomass. Soil Biol
Biochem 135:286–293.


Other interesting stories:



Phosphate-solubilizing bacteria could help replace
fertilizer for plants (paper)

Ciliate protists have bacterial microbiomes too




 


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com. Thanks for listening!


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