Global environmental factors impact soil microbial communities and further affect organic matter decomposition, nutrient cycling and vegetation dynamic. However, little is known about the relative contributions of climate factors, soil properties, vegetation types, land management practices and spatial structure (which serves as a proxy for underlying effects of temperature and precipitation fo...

Lakes are dynamic and complex ecosystems that can be influenced by physical, chemical, and biological processes. Additionally, individual lakes are often chemically and physically distinct, even within the same geographic region. Here we show that differences in physicochemical conditions among freshwater lakes located on (and around) the same island, as well as within the water column of each ...

To understand how contaminants affect microbial community diversity, heterogeneity, and functional structure, six groundwater monitoring wells from the Field Research Center of the U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Remediation Science Program (ERSP; Oak Ridge, TN), with a wide range of pH, titrate, and heavy metal contamination were investigated. DNA from the groundwater community was ana...

Despite decades of research there is limited understanding of how vegetation impacts the ability of microbial communities to process organic contaminants in soil. Using a combination of traditional and molecular assays, we examined how phytoremediation with willow and/or fertilization affected the microbial community present and active in the transformation of diesel contaminants. In a pot stud...

Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have increased dramatically in Pennsylvania Marcellus shale formations, however the potential for major environmental impacts are still incompletely understood. High-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was performed to characterize the microbial community structure of water, sediment, bryophyte, and biofilm samples from 26 headwater stream sit...

Groundwaters may act as sinks or sources of organic and inorganic solutes, depending on the relative magnitude of biochemical mobilizing processes and groundwater-surface water exchanges. The objective of this study was to link the lithological and hydrogeological gradients to the aquatic microbial community structure in the transition from aquifer recharge (volcanic formations) to discharge ar...

Unraveling the drivers of community structure and succession in response to environmental change is a central goal in ecology. Although the mechanisms shaping community structure have been intensively examined, those controlling ecological succession remain elusive. To understand the relative importance of stochastic and deterministic processes in mediating microbial community succession, a uni...

Phytate represents an organic pool of phosphorus in soil that requires hydrolysis by phytase enzymes produced microorganisms prior to its bioavailability plants. We tested the ability a microbial suspension made from old growth maple forest’s undisturbed mineralize phytate greenhouse trial on soybean plants inoculated or non-inoculated with suspension. MiSeq Amplicon sequencing targeting bacter...

Metagenomics is the study of the genomes present in communities of organisms found in environmental samples. Most microbial organisms are not culturable and therefore these communities cannot be studied using traditional laboratory techniques. Metagenomics, a sequencingbased, cultivation-independent approach, can help provide powerful insights into microbial community structure, the processes t...