Substrate-induced changes in microbial community-level physiological profilesand their application to discriminate soil microbial communities
CHEN Jian , XIE Huijun , ZHUANG Xuliang , ZHUANG Guoqiang , BAI Zhihui , ZHANG Hongxun
DOI:
Received August 20, 2007,Revised September 20, 2007, Accepted , Available online
Volume 20,2008,Pages 725-731
- Summary
- References
- Related Articles
The addition of simple substrates could a ect the microbial respiration in soils. This substrate-induced respiration is widely used to
estimate the soil microbial biomass, but little attention has been paid to its influence on the changes of community-level physiological
profiles. In this study, the process of microbial communities responding to the added substrate using sole-carbon-source utilization
(BIOLOG) was investigated. BIOLOG is biased toward fast-growing bacteria; this advantage was taken to detect the prompt response
of the active microbial communities to the added substrate. Four soil samples from agricultural fields adjacent to heavy metal mines
were amended with L-arginine, citric acid, or D-glucose. Substrate amendments could, generally, not only increase the metabolic
activity of the microbial communities, but also change the metabolic diverse patterns compared with no-substrate control. By tracking
the process, it was found that the variance between substrate-induced treatment and control fluctuated greatly during the incubation
course, and the influences of these three substrates were di erent. In addition, the application of these induced changes to discriminate
soil microbial communities was tested. The distance among all samples was greatly increased, which further showed the functional
variance among microbial communities in soils. This can be very useful in the discrimination of microbial communities even with high
similarity.
