Unexpected nondenitrifier nitrous oxide reductase gene diversity and abundance in soils

摘要

Agricultural and industrial practices more than doubled the intrinsic rate of terrestrial N fixation over the past century with drastic consequences, including increased atmospheric nitrous oxide (N_2O) concentrations. N_2O is a potent greenhouse gas and contributor to ozone layer destruction, and its release from fixed N is almost entirely controlled by microbial activities. Mitigation of N_2O emissions to the atmosphere has been attributed exclusively to denitrif iers possessing NosZ, the enzyme system catalyzing N_2O to N_2 reduction. We demonstrate that diverse microbial taxa possess divergent nos clusters with genes that are related yet evolutionarily distinct from the typical nos genes of denitirifers. nos clusters with atypical nosZ occur in Bacteria and Archaea that denitrify (44% of genomes), do not possess other denitrification genes (56%), or perform dissimila-tory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA; (31 %). Experiments with the DNRA soil bacterium Anaeromyxobacter dehalogenans demonstrated that the atypical NosZ is an effective N_2O reductase, and PCR-based surveys suggested that atypical nosZ are abundant in terrestrial environments. Bioinformatic analyses revealed that atypical nos clusters possess distinctive regulatory and functional components (e.g., Sec vs. Tat secretion pathway in typical nos), and that previous nosZ-targeted PCR primers do not capture the atypical nosZ diversity. Collectively, our results suggest that nondenitrifying populations with a broad range of metabolisms and habitats are potentially significant contributors to N_2O consumption. Apparently, a large, previously unrecognized group of environmental nosZ has not been accounted for, and characterizing their contributions to N_2O consumption will advance understanding of the ecological controls on N_2O emissions and lead to refined greenhouse gas flux models.