Publications by authors named "Brianna K Finley"
Nat Ecol Evol
November 2024
Article Synopsis
- Measuring the growth rate of microorganisms is crucial for understanding their role in ecosystems, as it reflects their resource use, biomass production, and impact on elements essential for life.
- Microbial adaptability determines their success, where rapid reproduction in favorable conditions and survival strategies in harsher conditions are linked to their relative growth rates.
- Advanced techniques like omics and stable isotope probing allow scientists to analyze microbial growth in soil, helping to connect microbial diversity and environmental factors to important ecosystem processes like carbon flux and nutrient cycling.
Article Synopsis
- The newly sequenced and existing genomes of the Omnitrophota phylum were analyzed to better understand their habitat, metabolism, and lifestyles, revealing a diversity of 6 classes and 276 species.
- Most Omnitrophota are ultra-small (~0.2 μm) and are commonly found in water, sediments, and soils, possessing reduced genomes yet retaining key biosynthetic and energy pathways.
- A significant portion of Omnitrophota genomes suggests they have symbiotic relationships, and some families were linked to obligate predatory lifestyles, indicating they may act as predators or parasites in various ecosystems.
Article Synopsis
- The study examines how life history strategies, particularly the copiotroph-oligotroph framework, can predict bacterial growth rates in different soil ecosystems.
- Researchers measured bacterial responses to glucose and ammonium to see how well these groups sorted bacteria based on their nutrient use.
- Results showed significant nutrient response overlap among bacterial taxa, indicating that finer taxonomic classifications (like genus) are more effective than broad classifications (like phylum) in understanding microbial growth patterns in varying soil conditions.
Article Synopsis
- Secondary minerals, especially short-range order minerals, significantly influence soil composition and microbial communities, affecting how bacteria grow in different soils.
- A study examined three soils with various mineral contents, finding that the presence of short-range order minerals suppressed bacterial growth overall, impacting 25-36% of bacterial taxa across the soils.
- The addition of carbon from plant litter or root exudates had a minor effect on bacterial growth compared to soil type, but still promoted growth for some bacterial families, indicating the complex interactions between bacteria, minerals, and organic matter in soil carbon processing.
Article Synopsis
- Predation plays a crucial role in ecosystems, impacting food webs, energy flow, and nutrient cycling, though most research has focused on larger predators rather than microscopic ones like bacteria.
- This study found that obligate predatory bacteria exhibited significantly higher growth and carbon uptake (36% and 211% more, respectively) compared to nonpredatory bacteria across various environments, while facultative predators showed only slightly enhanced rates.
- The research indicates that increased energy flow in microbial communities boosts the role of predatory bacteria, suggesting that more productive environments lead to stronger predatory influence on lower trophic levels.
Methods Mol Biol
June 2020
Article Synopsis
- - Quantitative stable isotope probing (qSIP) measures how specific microorganisms absorb elements using substrates with heavy isotopes, allowing researchers to identify which taxa are taking up certain nutrients.
- - The qSIP laboratory process is similar to regular stable isotope probing but includes two important steps: measuring the DNA in density fractions with qPCR and sequencing multiple density fractions to capture all nucleic acids present.
- - This method not only identifies the microorganisms that are utilizing a particular substrate but also quantifies the extent of that assimilation for each taxon in the microbial community.
