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MICROBIAL ECOLOGY

Solving the structure–function puzzle

Nature Microbiology volume 3, pages 750–751 (2018)Cite this article

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Rare species tend to degrade complex substrates while common species contribute most to biomass and respiration, moving us towards a solution for structure–function mapping in microbial communities.

In an Article in this issue of Nature Microbiology, Rivett and Bell2 take a data-intensive approach to address this question and report what is one of the most ambitious efforts made to date in linking community structure to function. Using over 700 communities, originally collected from small rainwater pools in treeholes, Rivett and Bell reveal that that high- and low-abundance species can have distinctive functional characteristics. Low-abundance heterotrophs seem to be involved mainly in the breakdown of complex molecules, such as hemicellulose, whereas the highly abundant species contributed to the bulk of respiration and ATP production (Fig. 1). This is reminiscent of what is observed in lakes and oceans, where less abundant, particle-attached taxa hydrolyse complex biopolymers, while abundant organisms such as the freshwater acI Actinobacteria3 or the marine Pelagibacter4 drive the cycling of carbon. Rivett and Bell also report that synergistic interactions that increase the rate of hydrolysis were common among rare taxa, whereas antagonistic interactions were more frequent among abundant ones.

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Fig. 1: Rare and common species are partitioned across trophic chains.

Image courtesy of T. Bell, Imperial College London

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Lei Ma & Otto X. Cordero

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  1. Lei Ma
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  2. Otto X. Cordero
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Correspondence to Lei Ma.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Ma, L., Cordero, O.X. Solving the structure–function puzzle. Nat Microbiol 3, 750–751 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-018-0186-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-018-0186-7

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