Current understanding of how bacteria metabolize plant-derived compounds is surprisingly limited given the importance of these processes to the global carbon cycle. The researchers hypothesize that nominally “recalcitrant” t-DOM in salt marshes is made more reactive by pulses of labile DOM derived from coastal wetland marshes and phytoplankton. Outcomes of their studies have the potential to reveal conserved and predictable metabolic responses that contribute to regulation of the transformation and turnover of naturally occurring refractory DOM and has implications for the processing of plant-derived material from diverse systems.
Proposer: Alison Buchan, University of Tennessee, Knoxville