Environmental Microbes

Question 1

earth’s upper atmosphere

Answer 1

remarkably harsh conditions - affect, if not control, climate.

Question 2

certain environmental exposures could change quorum sensing

Answer 2

in a way that would present us with an impending health risk.

Question 3

Rhizobia in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing root nodules

Answer 3

takes part in producing iron-containing leghemoglobin.

Question 4

White clover cryptic virus (WCCV)

Answer 4

prevents its host plants from forming a mutualistic association with Rhizobium bacteria if the soil contains enough nitrogen; saves the plant from wasting energy producing root nodules and donating sugar to the bacteria when it doesn’t need nitrogen.

Question 5

Microbial Carbon Pump (MCP).

Answer 5

• photosynthetic microbes die; some of the carbon they fixed is released into the ocean as dissolved organic carbon - acts as a food source for non-photosynthetic marine microbes
• release some of the carbon back into the ocean as dissolved CO2 via respiration, some is recycled back to DOC when they are killed by viruses and the rest enters the marine food web when they are eaten by other marine organisms
• any DOC that is not consumed by marine microbes remains in the ocean carbon reservoir and slowly sediments to the ocean floor where it mineralizes to form rock: a carbon sink that lasts for millions of years.

Question 6

heat-stable Taq polymerase from Thermus aquaticus

Answer 6

enabled the development of PCR

Question 7

restriction endonucleases that bacteria produce to defend themselves against bacteriophages

Answer 7

are very useful in cloning because they cut DNA at specific sequences

Question 8

soil warming experiment effect on

Answer 8

heat shock and cold shock proteins

Question 9

adaptive responses

Answer 9

dormancy, carbon storage and osmolyte reservation and extracellular polymeric substance production

Question 10

stresses

Answer 10

e.g. osmotic and drought

Question 11

organic matter inputs

Answer 11

such as phytohormones

Question 12

applying plant growth-promoters to seed coatings

Answer 12

such as Rhizobium for nitrogen fixation, IAA for root production and N2O-consuming communities ammonia oxidation pathway inhibitors

Question 13

endophytes as phyllospheric inoculants

Answer 13

specifically for phosphate solubilization, in legumes

Question 14

CLSM and integration green fluorescent protein cassette biomarking and nif overexpression

Answer 14

may allow the development of similar associations in non-leguminous plants,

Question 15

changes in soil organic carbon availability and aridity (caused by desertification) in cryptogamic soil

Answer 15

with relevance to bacterial and fungal concentration, to determine drought-sensitivity and the differential changes in the bulk microbiome and plant community dispersal structure (e.g. C4 or C3 plants) that will occur, and how inter-kingdom interactions can be harnessed to connect resource islands

Question 16

land degradation, erosion, increased solar penetration, albedo alterations, pH shifts and organic layer soil combustion on species with differing natural fire resiliences

Answer 16

to avoid the pasteurization that would destroy soil aggregate structure, reducing aeration and result in proliferation of pathogenic taxa, and a degraded ecosystem

Question 17

resource depletion due to

Answer 17

reduced snowpack, increasing freeze-thaw cycles and salt-intrusion on methanogenesis, denitrification and redox cycling dynamics

Question 18

transition of peatlands from carbon sinks to sources

Answer 18

and to prevent boom and bust

Question 19

Managing carbon and photosynthate rhizodeposition (and litter) input (through root exudation and sloughed root cap cells)

Answer 19

through autotrophic sequestration and other biochemical transformation pathways for bioavailable microbial exchange in the soil matrix and persistence in recalcitrant end products will have greater efficacy if biodiversity is maintained

Question 20

arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Answer 20

for regulation of aquaporins

Question 21

plant genetic modification

Answer 21

for selection of root- colonizing symbioses to optimise the plant-microorganism-soil system

Question 22

identification of rhizospheric endo- and ectosymbioses…

Answer 22

… such as syntrophy

Question 23

panomic attempts to overcome the difficulties presented by

Answer 23

microbe-physiology heterogeneity and electron acceptor availability, spatiotemporal variability, the highly structured and yet dynamic environment and relic DNA obscurities.

Question 24

New technological advances

Answer 24

sensitive mass spectrometry, long-read sequencing technologies, high-throughput sequencing studies, deep metagenome sequencing, computational approaches, fluxomics, gap filling, microfluidics and stable isotope probing, could be utilised at the micro-relevant scale

Question 25

isolation and functional gene annotation of microbes, identification of dominant heterotrophic pathways and elucidating metabolic interdependencies and cooperation at a community level

Answer 25

through bioprospecting microbial network metabolism and complementary metabolic output

Question 26

the transition from metagenome to metaphenome involves

Answer 26

establishing soil community genes, and refining chains of expression through the metatranscriptome and metaproteome data, will allow the construction of a naturally evolved and tractable model soil consortia in the soil environment, allowing the study of metabolic and spatial interactions through chemical signalling

Question 27

combining soil isolates into synthetic communities

Answer 27

to organise complex microbiomes into guilds should allow the creation of genome bins to allow the application of comparative genomics, which will all be imperative in the understanding of microbial response to perturbation