The research goal of this project is to develop a computational approach known as Variation-leveraged Phenomic Association Study (VaLPAS) to address the challenge of using functional dark matter (proteins, metabolites, lipids) for bioeconomy applications. The project has four objectives: 1...
Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of hotter and more intense droughts accompanied by aberrant precipitation events. Such extreme environmental shifts can trigger a complex cascade of microbial physiological responses that can impact the microbial community structure and functions...
Please cite as: Graham E.B., and K.S. Hofmockel. 2021. "Ecological stoichiometry as a foundation for omics-enabled biogeochemical models of soil organic matter decomposition." Biogeochemistry 157. doi:10.1007/s10533-021-00851-2 Coupled biogeochemical cycles drive ecosystem ecology by influencing...
Soil viruses are highly abundant and have important roles in the regulation of host dynamics and soil ecology. Climate change is resulting in unprecedented changes to soil ecosystems and the life forms that reside there, including viruses. In this Review, we explore our current understanding of soil...
Metagenomics is unearthing the previously hidden world of soil viruses. Many soil viral sequences in metagenomes contain putative auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) that are not associated with viral replication. Here, we establish that AMGs on soil viruses actually produce functional, active proteins...
ABSTRACT Fungal mineral weathering regulates the bioavailability of inorganic nutrients from mineral surfaces to organic matter and increase the bioavailable fraction of nutrients. Such weathering strategies are classified as biomechanical or biochemical. In the case of fungal uptake of mineral...
ABSTRACT Climate change is causing an increase in drought in many soil ecosystems and a loss of soil organic carbon. Calcareous soils may partially mitigate these losses via carbon capture and storage. Here, we aimed to determine how irrigation-supplied soil moisture and perennial plants impact...
Abstract Microbial response to changing environmental factors influences the fate of soil organic carbon, and drought has been shown to affect microbial metabolism and respiration. We hypothesized that the access of microbes to different carbon pools in response to dry–rewet events occurs...
Introduction: Understanding how microorganisms within a soil community interact to support collective respiration and growth remains challenging. Here, we used a model substrate, chitin, and a synthetic Model Soil Consortium (MSC-2) to investigate how individual members of a microbial community...
The soil microbiome’s role in regulating biogeochemical processing is critical to the cycling and storage of soil organic carbon (C). The function of the microbiome under different land management uses has become a focal area of research due to the interest in managing soil C to mitigate climate...
Primary publication pre-print. Cite as: arXiv:2410.09346 [q-bio.MN]
Citation: Mejia-Rodriguez D, Kim H, Sadler N, Li X, Bohutskyi P, Valiev M, Qian WJ, Cheung MS. PTM-Psi: A python package to facilitate the computational investigation of post-translational modification on protein structures and their impacts on dynamics and functions. Protein Sci. 2023 Dec;32(12)...
Citation : Reichart NJ, Steiger AK, Van Fossen EM, McClure R, Overkleeft HS, Wright AT. Selection and enrichment of microbial species with an increased lignocellulolytic phenotype from a native soil microbiome by activity-based probing. ISME Commun. 2023 Sep 30;3(1):106. doi: 10.1038/s43705-023...
The research goal of this project is to establish model synthetic microbial communities to understand the rules regulating their biological function in order to utilize them as next generation bioproduction platforms capable of reducing carbon and nitrogen footprints in biomanufacturing processes.
