Microbial carbon use efficiency promotes global soil carbon storage

Soils store more carbon than other terrestrial ecosystems$^{1,2}$. How soil organic carbon (SOC) forms and persists remains uncertain$^{1,3}$, which makes it challenging to understand how it will respond to climatic change$^{3,4}$. It has been suggested that soil microorganisms play an important role in SOC formation, preservation and loss$^{5–7}$. Although microorganisms affect the accumulation and loss of soil organic matter through many pathways$^{4,6,8–11}$, microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) is an integrative metric that can capture the balance of these processes$^{12,13}$. Although CUE has the potential to act as a predictor of variation in SOC storage, the role of CUE in SOC persistence remains unresolved$^{7,14,15}$. Here we examine the relationship between CUE and the preservation of SOC, and interactions with climate, vegetation and edaphic properties, using a combination of global-scale datasets, a microbial-process explicit model, data assimilation, deep learning and meta-analysis. We find that CUE is at least four times as important as other evaluated factors, such as carbon input, decomposition or vertical transport, in determining SOC storage and its spatial variation across the globe. In addition, CUE shows a positive correlation with SOC content. Our findings point to microbial CUE as a major determinant of global SOC storage. Understanding the microbial processes underlying CUE and their environmental dependence may help the prediction of SOC feedback to a changing climate

Reply to: Contribution of carbon inputs to soil carbon accumulation cannot be neglected

In the accompanying Comment1, He et al. argue that the determinant role of microbial carbon use efficiency in global soil organic carbon (SOC) storage shown in Tao et al. (2023)2 was overestimated because carbon inputs were neglected in our data analysis while they suggest that our model-based analysis could be biased and model-dependent. Their argument is based on a different choice of independent variables in the data analysis and a sensitivity analysis of two process-based models other than that used in our study. We agree that both carbon inputs and outputs (as mediated by microbial processes) matter when predicting SOC storage – the question is their relative contributions. While we encourage further studies to examine how the evaluation of the relative importance of CUE to global SOC storage may vary with different model structures, He et al.’s claims about Tao et al. (2023) need to be taken as an alternative, unproven hypothesis until empirical data support their specific parameterization. Here we show that an additional literature assessment of global data does not support He et al.’s argument, in contrast to our study, and that further study on this topic is essential

Microbial carbon use efficiency promotes global soil carbon storage

Funding Information: We thank H. Yang, M. Schrumpf, T. Wutzler, R. Zheng and H. Ma for their comments and suggestions on this study. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42125503) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFA0608000, 2020YFA0607900 and 2021YFC3101600). F.T. was financially supported by China Scholarship Council during his visit at Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (201906210489) and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (202006210289). The contributions of Y.L. were supported through US National Science Foundation DEB 1655499 and 2242034, subcontract CW39470 from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to Cornell University, DOE De-SC0023514, and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. S.M. has received funding from the ERC under the European Union’s H2020 Research and Innovation Programme (101001608). The contributions of U.M. were supported through a US Department of Energy grant to the Sandia National Laboratories, which is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525. We thank the WoSIS database ( https://www.isric.org/explore/wosis ) for providing the publicly available global-scale SOC database used in this study. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Reply to: Beyond microbial carbon use efficiency

In their commentary, Xiao et al. cautioned that the conclusions on the critical role of microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) in global soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in a paper by Tao et al. (2023) might be too simplistic. They claimed that Tao et al.’s study lacked mechanistic consideration of SOC formation and excluded important datasets. Xiao et al. brought up important points, which can be largely reconciled with our findings by understanding the differences in expressing processes in empirical studies and in models

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Meta-mining of copy number profiles of high-risk neuroblastoma tumors

Neuroblastoma, a pediatric tumor of the sympathetic nervous system, is predominantly driven by copy number aberrations, which predict survival outcome in global neuroblastoma cohorts and in low-risk cases. For high-risk patients there is still a need for better prognostic biomarkers. Via an international collaboration, we collected copy number profiles of 556 high-risk neuroblastomas generated on different array platforms. This manuscript describes the composition of the dataset, the methods used to process the data, including segmentation and aberration calling, and data validation. t-SNE analysis shows that samples cluster according to MYCN status, and shows a difference between array platforms. 97.3% of samples are characterized by the presence of segmental aberrations, in regions frequently affected in neuroblastoma. Focal aberrations affect genes known to be involved in neuroblastoma, such as ALK and LIN28B. To conclude, we compiled a unique large copy number dataset of high-risk neuroblastoma tumors, available via R2 and a Shiny web application. The availability of patient survival data allows to further investigate the prognostic value of copy number aberrations

The effect of stocking density in transit on the carcass quality and welfare of slaughter pigs: 2. Results from the analysis of blood and meat samples

In a trial involving 2496 pigs, the influences on blood profile and pork quality of stocking densities ranging from 201 to 321 kg m−2 were examined. The pigs came from four different farms and were killed in 16 weekly batches. They were transported for on average 3 hr and held in lairage for 1 hr. Higher stocking densities resulted in more physical stress to the pigs based on the activity of the enzyme CPK in the blood. Stocking density did not apparently affect psychological stress and high densities did not result in dehydration. The colour, water holding capacity and instrumentally-determined texture of the pork from the carcasses of the pigs were not affected by stocking density. The experimental design and precision of the measurements were sufficient to detect numerous differences in blood profile and pork quality between pigs from the four source farms. These differences probably related to different degrees of stress-susceptibility. The results suggest that the highest stocking density examined (321 kg m−2) is unacceptable for the transport of pigs. The second highest density (281 kg m−2) produced relatively little evidence of an adverse effect on the welfare of pigs. It may be scientifically acceptable for short journeys (≤3 hr) but not for longer ones where pigs need more space to lie down

SegAnnDB: interactive web-based genomic segmentation

International audienc