Fierer
Noah
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Noah
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ArticleElevational constraints on the composition and genomic attributes of microbial communities in Antarctic soils(American Society for Microbiology, 2022-01-18) Dragone, Nicholas B. ; Henley, Jessica B. ; Holland-Moritz, Hannah ; Diaz, Melisa A. ; Hogg, Ian D. ; Lyons, W. Berry ; Wall, Diana H. ; Adams, Byron J. ; Fierer, NoahThe inland soils found on the Antarctic continent represent one of the more challenging environments for microbial life on Earth. Nevertheless, Antarctic soils harbor unique bacterial and archaeal (prokaryotic) communities able to cope with extremely cold and dry conditions. These communities are not homogeneous, and the taxonomic composition and functional capabilities (genomic attributes) of these communities across environmental gradients remain largely undetermined. We analyzed the prokaryotic communities in soil samples collected from across the Shackleton Glacier region of Antarctica by coupling quantitative PCR, marker gene amplicon sequencing, and shotgun metagenomic sequencing. We found that elevation was the dominant factor explaining differences in the structures of the soil prokaryotic communities, with the drier and saltier soils found at higher elevations harboring less diverse communities and unique assemblages of cooccurring taxa. The higher-elevation soil communities also had lower maximum potential growth rates (as inferred from metagenome-based estimates of codon usage bias) and an overrepresentation of genes associated with trace gas metabolism. Together, these results highlight the utility of assessing community shifts across pronounced environmental gradients to improve our understanding of the microbial diversity found in Antarctic soils and the strategies used by soil microbes to persist at the limits of habitability.
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ArticleExisting climate change will lead to pronounced shifts in the diversity of soil prokaryotes(American Society for Microbiology, 2018-10-23) Ladau, Joshua ; Shi, Yu ; Jing, Xin ; He, Jin-Sheng ; Chen, Litong ; Lin, Xiangui ; Fierer, Noah ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Pollard, Katherine ; Chu, HaiyanSoil bacteria are key to ecosystem function and maintenance of soil fertility. Leveraging associations of current geographic distributions of bacteria with historic climate, we predict that soil bacterial diversity will increase across the majority (∼75%) of the Tibetan Plateau and northern North America if bacterial communities equilibrate with existing climatic conditions. This prediction is possible because the current distributions of soil bacteria have stronger correlations with climate from ∼50 years ago than with current climate. This lag is likely associated with the time it takes for soil properties to adjust to changes in climate. The predicted changes are location specific and differ across bacterial taxa, including some bacteria that are predicted to have reductions in their distributions. These findings illuminate the widespread potential of climate change to influence belowground diversity and the importance of considering bacterial communities when assessing climate impacts on terrestrial ecosystems.
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ArticleGeochemical zones and environmental gradients for soils from the central Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica(European Geosciences Union, 2021-03-09) Diaz, Melisa A. ; Gardner, Christopher B. ; Welch, Susan A. ; Jackson, W. Andrew ; Adams, Byron J. ; Wall, Diana H. ; Hogg, Ian D. ; Fierer, Noah ; Lyons, W. BerryPrevious studies have established links between biodiversity and soil geochemistry in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, where environmental gradients are important determinants of soil biodiversity. However, these gradients are not well established in the central Transantarctic Mountains, which are thought to represent some of the least hospitable Antarctic soils. We analyzed 220 samples from 11 ice-free areas along the Shackleton Glacier (∼ 85∘ S), a major outlet glacier of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. We established three zones of distinct geochemical gradients near the head of the glacier (upper), its central part (middle), and at the mouth (lower). The upper zone had the highest water-soluble salt concentrations with total salt concentrations exceeding 80 000 µg g−1, while the lower zone had the lowest water-soluble N:P ratios, suggesting that, in addition to other parameters (such as proximity to water and/or ice), the lower zone likely represents the most favorable ecological habitats. Given the strong dependence of geochemistry on geographic parameters, we developed multiple linear regression and random forest models to predict soil geochemical trends given latitude, longitude, elevation, distance from the coast, distance from the glacier, and soil moisture (variables which can be inferred from remote measurements). Confidence in our random forest model predictions was moderately high with R2 values for total water-soluble salts, water-soluble N:P, ClO−4, and ClO−3 of 0.81, 0.88, 0.78, and 0.74, respectively. These modeling results can be used to predict geochemical gradients and estimate salt concentrations for other Transantarctic Mountain soils, information that can ultimately be used to better predict distributions of soil biota in this remote region.
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PreprintMinimum information about a marker gene sequence (MIMARKS) and minimum information about any (x) sequence (MIxS) specifications( 2011-01-04) Yilmaz, Pelin ; Kottmann, Renzo ; Field, Dawn ; Knight, Rob ; Cole, James R. ; Amaral-Zettler, Linda A. ; Gilbert, Jack A. ; Karsch-Mizrachi, Ilene ; Johnston, Anjanette ; Cochrane, Guy R. ; Vaughan, Robert ; Hunter, Christopher ; Park, Joonhong ; Morrison, Norman ; Rocca-Serra, Philippe ; Sterk, Peter ; Arumugam, Manimozhiyan ; Bailey, Mark ; Baumgartner, Laura ; Birren, Bruce W. ; Blaser, Martin J. ; Bonazzi, Vivien ; Booth, Tim ; Bork, Peer ; Bushman, Frederic D. ; Buttigieg, Pier Luigi ; Chain, Patrick S. G. ; Charlson, Emily ; Costello, Elizabeth K. ; Huot-Creasy, Heather ; Dawyndt, Peter ; DeSantis, Todd ; Fierer, Noah ; Fuhrman, Jed A. ; Gallery, Rachel E. ; Gevers, Dirk ; Gibbs, Richard A. ; San Gil, Inigo ; Gonzalez, Antonio ; Gordon, Jeffrey I. ; Guralnick, Robert P. ; Hankeln, Wolfgang ; Highlander, Sarah ; Hugenholtz, Philip ; Jansson, Janet K. ; Kau, Andrew L. ; Kelley, Scott T. ; Kennedy, Jerry ; Knights, Dan ; Koren, Omry ; Kuczynski, Justin ; Kyrpides, Nikos C. ; Larsen, Robert ; Lauber, Christian L. ; Legg, Teresa ; Ley, Ruth E. ; Lozupone, Catherine A. ; Ludwig, Wolfgang ; Lyons, Donna ; Maguire, Eamonn ; Methe, Barbara A. ; Meyer, Folker ; Muegge, Brian ; Nakielny, Sara ; Nelson, Karen E. ; Nemergut, Diana ; Neufeld, Josh D. ; Newbold, Lindsay K. ; Oliver, Anna E. ; Pace, Norman R. ; Palanisamy, Giriprakash ; Peplies, Jorg ; Petrosino, Joseph ; Proctor, Lita ; Pruesse, Elmar ; Quast, Christian ; Raes, Jeroen ; Ratnasingham, Sujeevan ; Ravel, Jacques ; Relman, David A. ; Assunta-Sansone, Susanna ; Schloss, Patrick D. ; Schriml, Lynn M. ; Sinha, Rohini ; Smith, Michelle I. ; Sodergren, Erica ; Spor, Ayme ; Stombaugh, Jesse ; Tiedje, James M. ; Ward, Doyle V. ; Weinstock, George M. ; Wendel, Doug ; White, Owen ; Whiteley, Andrew ; Wilke, Andreas ; Wortman, Jennifer R. ; Yatsunenko, Tanya ; Glockner, Frank OliverHere we present a standard developed by the Genomic Standards Consortium (GSC) to describe marker gene sequences—the minimum information about a marker gene sequence (MIMARKS). We also introduce a system for describing the environment from which a biological sample originates. The “environmental packages” apply to any sequence whose origin is known and can therefore be used in combination with MIMARKS or other GSC checklists. Finally, to establish a unified standard for describing sequence data and to provide a single point of entry for the scientific community to access and learn about GSC checklists, we establish the minimum information about any (x) sequence (MIxS). Adoption of MIxS will enhance our ability to analyze natural genetic diversity across the Tree of Life as it is currently being documented by massive DNA sequencing efforts from myriad ecosystems in our ever-changing biosphere.
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ArticleExploring the boundaries of microbial habitability in soil(American Geophysical Union, 2021-05-29) Dragone, Nicholas B. ; Diaz, Melisa A. ; Hogg, Ian D. ; Lyons, W. Berry ; Jackson, W. Andrew ; Wall, Diana H. ; Adams, Byron J. ; Fierer, NoahMicrobes are widely assumed to be capable of colonizing even the most challenging terrestrial surface environments on Earth given enough time. We would not expect to find surface soils uninhabited by microbes as soils typically harbor diverse microbial communities and viable microbes have been detected in soils exposed to even the most inhospitable conditions. However, if uninhabited soils do exist, we might expect to find them in Antarctica. We analyzed 204 ice-free soils collected from across a remote valley in the Transantarctic Mountains (84–85°S, 174–177°W) and were able to identify a potential limit of microbial habitability. While most of the soils we tested contained diverse microbial communities, with fungi being particularly ubiquitous, microbes could not be detected in many of the driest, higher elevation soils—results that were confirmed using cultivation-dependent, cultivation-independent, and metabolic assays. While we cannot confirm that this subset of soils is completely sterile and devoid of microbial life, our results suggest that microbial life is severely restricted in the coldest, driest, and saltiest Antarctic soils. Constant exposure to these conditions for thousands of years has limited microbial communities so that their presence and activity is below detectable limits using a variety of standard methods. Such soils are unlikely to be unique to the studied region with this work supporting previous hypotheses that microbial habitability is constrained by near-continuous exposure to cold, dry, and salty conditions, establishing the environmental conditions that limit microbial life in terrestrial surface soils.
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ArticleStrong dispersal limitation of microbial communities at Shackleton Glacier, Antarctica(American Society for Microbiology, 2023-01-31) Lemoine, Nathan P. ; Adams, Byron J. ; Diaz, Melisa ; Dragone, Nicholas B. ; Franco, André L. C. ; Fierer, Noah ; Lyons, W Berry ; Hogg, Ian D. ; Wall, Diana H.Microbial communities can be structured by both deterministic and stochastic processes, but the relative importance of these processes remains unknown. The ambiguity partly arises from an inability to disentangle soil microbial processes from confounding factors, such as aboveground plant communities or anthropogenic disturbance. In this study, we characterized the relative contributions of determinism and stochasticity to assembly processes of soil bacterial communities across a large environmental gradient of undisturbed Antarctic soils. We hypothesized that harsh soils would impose a strong environmental selection on microbial communities, whereas communities in benign soils would be structured largely by dispersal. Contrary to our expectations, dispersal was the dominant assembly mechanism across the entire soil environmental gradient, including benign environments. The microbial community composition reflects slowly changing soil conditions and dispersal limitation of isolated sites. Thus, stochastic processes, as opposed to deterministic, are primary drivers of soil ecosystem assembly across space at our study site. This is especially surprising given the strong environmental constraints on soil microorganisms in one of the harshest environments on the planet, suggesting that dispersal could be a driving force in microbial community assembly in soils worldwide.Because of their diversity and ubiquity, microbes provide an excellent means to tease apart how natural communities are structured. In general, ecologists believe that stochastic assembly processes, like random drift and dispersal, should dominate in benign environments while deterministic processes, like environmental filtering, should be prevalent in harsh environments. To help resolve this debate, we analyzed microbial community composition in pristine Antarctic soils devoid of human influence or plant communities for eons. Our results demonstrate that dispersal limitation is a surprisingly potent force of community limitation throughout all soil conditions. Thus, dispersal appears to be a driving force of microbial community assembly, even in the harshest of conditions.