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Microbial ecology: Linking omics to biogeochemistry

Nature Microbiology volume 1, Article number: 15028 (2016) Cite this article

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Natural volcanic CO2 seeps (mofettes) provided a natural experiment to use omic and biogeochemical approaches to explore how flooding a system with CO2 impacts algal photosynthesis and methanogenesis.

In the atmosphere, CO2 concentrations of 400 ppm are elevated enough to threaten the structure of the planetary biosphere. Belowground, in the soil, however CO2 can rise to far greater levels and under some circumstances, CO2 can saturate the soil atmosphere. While rare under current conditions, as industry develops technology to capture CO2 from power plants and factories and inject it underground (carbon capture and sequestration), the potential for the occurrence of plumes of leaking CO2 will increase. Yet, we have almost no model for how extremely elevated CO2 may affect the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. One natural model of a CO2-saturated system is low temperature volcanic CO2 seeps known as mofettes. Beulig et al.1 used a mofette in the Czech Republic and applied a suite of methods spanning from isotope geochemistry to modern metagenomics to explore the effects of CO2 saturation on carbon cycling and the microbial communities.

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Figure 1: The challenge in linking omics data to biogeochemical processes.

References

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  1. Joshua Schimel is in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.,

    Joshua Schimel

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  1. Joshua Schimel
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Schimel, J. Microbial ecology: Linking omics to biogeochemistry. Nat Microbiol 1, 15028 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2015.28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmicrobiol.2015.28

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