Microbial Nitrogen Cycles: Physiology, Genomics and Applications

A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Diversity and Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2023) | Viewed by 2069

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
Interests: microbial ecology; nitrogen cycle; nitrification; anammox; metagenomics
School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
Interests: biological wastewater treatment processes; anammox; denitrification

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Guest Editor
Department of Aquatic Environmental Engineering, Institute for Water and River Basin Management, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Interests: biological wastewater treatment processes; mainstream anammox; modelling wastewater treatment processes; microbiology of N-converting bacteria

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nitrogen is one of the essential elements for the origin of life on Earth and all life forms. Nitrogen gas (N2) in the atmosphere is the largest nitrogen storage with 3.9 × 109 Tg N, but most of organisms could only use reactive forms of nitrogen (e.g., ammonium, nitrite, and nitrate) for assimilation. The highly diverse nitrogen fixation microorganisms play an important role in transforming N2 to biologically available nitrogen species. However, due to the excessive use of industrial nitrogen-based fertilizers and the low efficiency of assimilation by crops in modern agriculture, human activity has a significant effect on the amount of bioavailable ‘reactive nitrogen’ in different ecosystems. Fertilizers in modern agriculture have become a new source of reactive nitrogen, and the total quantities of nitrogen input into the ecosystem are comparable to those from terrestrial or aquatic ecosystems. At the same time, inorganic nitrogen is also a serious environmental pollutant to aquatic ecosystem, resulting in environmental hazards such as eutrophication, which seriously damages the aquatic ecosystem. Our attention to the nitrogen cycle has shifted from  the challenge of increasing food production to realizing that excess inorganic nitrogen causes environmental hazards in modern agriculture.

Many breakthroughs in understanding the basic mechanisms that underlie microbial nitrogen transformations were made in past studies, but our fundamental knowledge of the communities, physiologies, metabolisms, and survival strategies of nitrogen-cycle-related microorganisms remains incomplete. Therefore, the topics of this Special Issue include (but are not limited to): (1) communities, structures, functions and dynamics of nitrogen-cycle-related microorganisms; (2) their metabolisms, niche adaption mechanisms, and survival strategies; (3) interactions with coexistent organisms and living environments; (4) and applications.

Dr. Yuchun Yang
Dr. Yanyan Jia
Dr. Mohammad Azari
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • nitrogen cycle
  • nitrogen fixation
  • nitrification
  • anammox
  • denitrification
  • wastewater treatment
  • metagenomics
  • physiology

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 3098 KiB  
Article
Effects of Different Types of Human Disturbance on Total and Nitrogen-Transforming Bacteria in Haihe River
by Peiyang Li, Tingyu Chen, Miao An, Ying Zhang, Yanying Li, Yang Li and Jing Wang
Life 2022, 12(12), 2081; https://doi.org/10.3390/life12122081 - 11 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1494
Abstract
Haihe River is the largest water system in North China and is injected into the Bohai Sea in Tianjin City. In this study, different types of human disturbance (urban sewage, industrial pollution, ship disturbance) were selected from the upper reaches of Haihe river [...] Read more.
Haihe River is the largest water system in North China and is injected into the Bohai Sea in Tianjin City. In this study, different types of human disturbance (urban sewage, industrial pollution, ship disturbance) were selected from the upper reaches of Haihe river Tianjin section down to the estuary that connected with Bohai Sea for evaluation. By metagenomic sequencing, the effects of different types of disturbances on bacteria communities in Haihe sediments were studied, with a special focus on the function of nitrogen-cycling bacteria that were further analyzed through KEGG comparison. By analyzing the physical and chemical characteristics of sediments, results showed that human disturbance caused a large amount of nitrogen input into Haihe River, and different types of human disturbance led to distinct spatial heterogeneity in different sections of Haihe River. The bacteria community was dominated by Proteobacteria, followed by Chloroflexi, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria and Acidobacteria. The relative abundance of each phylum varied at different sites as a response to different types of human disturbances. In nitrogen cycling, microorganisms including nitrogen fixation and removal were detected at each site, which indicated the active potential for nitrogen transformation in Haihe River. In addition, a large number of metabolic pathways relating to human diseases were also revealed in urban and pollution sites by function potential, which provided an important basis for the indicative role of urban river ecosystem for public health security. In summary, by evaluating both the ecological role and function potential of bacteria in Haihe River under different types of human disturbance, the knowledge of microorganisms for healthy and disturbed river ecosystems has been broadened, which is also informative for further river management and bioremediation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microbial Nitrogen Cycles: Physiology, Genomics and Applications)
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