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Soil Science

TPSS studies the effect of fungal-bacterial interactions on climate change

  • 5 October 2022
  • Author: Mark Berthold
  • Number of views: 1179
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Soil Science

Picture this: billions of bacteria from thousands of bacterial species, interacting with fungi hyphae that, laid end-to-end, would stretch for kilometers – all in a single teaspoon of soil.

These interactions might be at the microscopic level, but with billions of them occurring 24/7, a big question is their effect on nutrients, such as carbon and nitrogen, in the soil. Do they keep these molecules sequestered underground or do they release it into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change? And in locations of drought or reduced rainfall, do these interactions behave the same way?

Not an easy thing to study, considering the vast diversity of soils found globally. Fortunately, Hawai‘i has a tremendous variety, accounting for more than 80% of soil types on the planet at the Order level.

“The soil holds more carbon than all aboveground biomass and atmosphere combined, and soil microbes cycle the available nitrogen that sustains much of terrestrial life,” says Nhu Nguyen of the Dept. of Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences. “Whether these molecules are contributing to climate change is likely connected to the interactions among the millions of species of fungi and bacteria that live there.”

To study these ubiquitous and dominant members of the soil microbiome, Nhu and soil scientists Jonathan Deenik and Tai Maaz have partnered with Maggie Yuan of UC Berkeley, Jizhong Zhou of U Oklahoma, and Jennifer Pett-Ridge of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. They’re backed by a new three-year, $3.4M grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“I am very excited to be working with a fantastic team to figure out how interactions among members of the soil microbiome can determine the fate of molecules that warm the planet,” Nhu adds. “As these molecules flow through microbes in the soil, they can be captured by plants and thus help provide pathways toward sustainable agriculture – a system that both provides food and keeps carbon and harmful nitrogen molecules from leaving the soil.”

Watch the 1-Minute Video of Nhu, Tai, and Jonathan.

The Science

Due to the extremely complex nature of soil, the researchers will leverage tools they developed in the last decade, using stable-isotopes to trace C and N molecules as they move from atmosphere, into plants, into microbial cells, and eventually onto soil mineral surfaces, where they can be stabilized or released back into the atmosphere, Nhu explains.

The strength of the project lies at combining stable isotopes with multi-omics tools (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metabolomics) and pull all of these data streams together into a microbially-informed ecosystem model. This systems biology approach, scaling from molecule to organism to ecosystem, is fundamental to understanding the complexity of processes that happen within our soils and translating them to meaningful outcomes, such as mitigating climate change and supporting sustainable agriculture.

“Because of our island topology and small landmass, we can control for environmental factors, including climate and host plants, that can influence the soil microbiome,” says Nhu. “The diversity of soils in Hawai‘i plays a central role. In other words, this work can only be done in Hawaiʻi, but because each of our soils is representative of those found in larger continental landmasses, our findings would be translatable to other soils across the world.”

This work will contribute to an ongoing initiative at UH to study the microbiome of our natural and human-associated environments.

Read the UH News story.

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