Advancing our understanding of novel nitrous oxide reducers
- 1State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, shanjun@issas.ac.cn
- 2Program in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA, sooi3@illinois.edu
- 3Department of Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, 61801, rsanford@illinois.edu
- 4Global Change and Photosynthesis Research Unit, United States Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Station, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA, cheesanf@illinois.edu;
- 5Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, 37996, USA, frank.loeffler@utk.edu
- 6School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA, kostas.konstantinidis@gatech.edu;
- 7Departments of Plant Biology and Geology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA, yangw@illinois.edu
Sources of N2O (nitrous oxide) are multiple in the biosphere, but the only known process consuming N2O is the microbial reduction of N2O to dinitrogen (N2), which has traditionally been attributed to denitrifying bacteria and archaea. Recently, N2O reductase genes (nosZ) clearly phylogenetically differentiated from “typical” NosZ (Clade I) were shown to be more abundant in many soil ecosystems than “typical” nosZ genes, suggesting that our understanding of the role of nosZ in controlling soil N2O emissions was incomplete. This more abundant group of nosZ genes was designated as “atypical NosZ” or Clade II. Here, by synthesizing a meta-data of the 631 peer-reviewed papers published on NosZ in the six years since NosZ Clade II was first reported in the literature, we found that only 10% of studies evaluated Clade II NosZ and an additional 7% of papers merely mentioned Clade II NosZ showing little awareness of this novel gene. In addition, disciplinary silos also contribute to the slow spread of awareness about Clade II nosZ. A lack of consensus on the terminology used to refer to Clade I versus Clade II nosZ (more than 17 terminologies) may contribute to confusion about the two clades. Finally, we proposed several recommendations to accelerate progress in understanding the roles of Clade I versus Clade II N2O reducers in controlling soil N2O emissions.
How to cite: Shan, J., Ooi, S., Sanford, R. A., Chee-Sanford, J., Löffler, F., Konstantinidis, K., and Yang, W. H.: Advancing our understanding of novel nitrous oxide reducers, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-20866, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-20866, 2020
