Advances in microbial nitrogen metabolism: synergizing technological innovations to drive systems biology and...

Microbial nitrogen metabolism serves as the core driver of biogeochemical cycles, governing over 90% of global nitrogen transformations through enzymatic cascades. Its core regulatory mechanisms encompass a three-tiered system-nitrogen source perception, signal transduction, and systemic network control-enabling dynamic adaptation to nitrogen fluctuations while confronting key challenges including metabolic crosstalk complexity between carbon and nitrogen pathways and energy co-integration. Recent technological breakthroughs include cryo-electron microscopy elucidating the dynamic structures of key enzymes and artificial intelligence-driven multi-omics revealing metabolic network interactions. Emerging frontiers focus on CRISPR-mediated metabolic flux reprogramming and stress adaptation mechanisms in extremophiles. This review systematically integrates these core regulatory mechanisms, metabolic interaction patterns, and enzyme structure-function relationships, synthesizing advances in artificial intelligence multi-omics, CRISPR metabolic engineering, and extremophile nitrogen metabolism. It provides a panoramic perspective for deciphering the complex regulatory networks and cross-scale integration mechanisms of microbial nitrogen metabolism.