2.1 Study 1: Fate of low molecular weight organic substances in an arable soil:
2.1.5 Conclusion
This study compared and revealed the role of three classes of LMWOS – amino ac-ids, sugars and carboxylic acids in short-term microbial utilisation in soil. The similar LMWOS uptake at day 3 but differences in microbial incorporation at day 10 reflect that instead of initial uptake, the intracellular metabolization accounted for the observed dif-ferences in LMWOS fate in soils.
Amino acids were taken up by soil microorganisms in similar amounts on day 3, but much less glutamate than alanine remained in EMB on day 10. This reflects that sub-strates with direct incorporation into the oxidising citric acid cycle, such as glutamate, are preferentially oxidised for energy production compared to alanine, which enters glycoly-sis. The high and rapid glucose uptake by microbial biomass is connected with the fact that glucose is the most abundant sugar in the soils and ribose is taken up more slowly.
More sugar 13C was incorporated into MB than from amino acids and carboxylic acids, which reflects the preference of glycolysis substrates for anabolic utilization compared to catabolism. Higher amounts of 13C from acetate were incorporated into EMB than palmi-tate. For carboxylic acids, the 13C in EMB declined by a factor of two from day 3 to day
10, also reflecting the preferred catabolic oxidation of substances entering the citric acid cycle.
0.8 - 2% of the initial applied 13C were used for the formation of cell membranes i.e., for total PLFAs with no differences between amino acids, sugars and acetate. 8% of
13C from palmitate detected in PLFAs was a result of its direct use as a precursor for PLFA formation.
The PLFAs of individual microbial groups showed bacteria (especially G-) were highly competitive for LMWOS uptake. The contribution of fungi to LMWOS-C utilization was less than that of bacteria, due to the low amount of fungi as well as their low com-petitiveness for water-soluble, easily available and easily degradable substances. Only in utilization of acidic substrates like acetate or palmitate fungi can compete with some bac-terial groups. In general, more complex substrates such as palmitate are preferred by filamentous microorganisms. Thus, metabolisation and C partitioning within microbial cells between catabolism and anabolism affect the fate of individual LMWOS in soil. This can be attributed to their entering steps of basic C metabolism and consequently, to their individual metabolic pathways.
Further studies on the metabolic pathways of LMWOS, based on tools such as po-sition-specific (Dijkstra et al., 2011; Dippold and Kuzyakov, 2013; Apostel et al., 2013), and multiple-isotope labeling (Fokin et al., 1994, (Knowles et al., 2010) are necessary.
Studies on the long-term fate of LMWOS-C in soil should focus on microbial metabolism and products formed from this highly available C source in soil.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG KU 1184 19/1). Thanks are extended to MolTer and DAAD, which provided a fel-lowship for A. Gunina. The authors are grateful to Stefanie Bösel, a technical staff mem-ber of the Department of Soil Biochemistry, Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sci-ence, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg for performing the bulk isotope meas-urements.
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Supplementary Data
Supplementary Table A1: Fatty acids in the external standard
Supplementary Table A1: Results of factor analysis: Factor loadings and grouping of fatty acids derived from factor loadings and PLFAs literature.
Supplementary Table A3: Nested ANOVA between classes of LMWOS and single sub-stances nested in class of LMWOS for soil, microbial biomass and PLFAs. Degrees of freedom (df), values (F) and significance level (p) are shown for the two time points.