Denitrification is a community trait with partial pathways dominating across microbial genomes and biomes
Grace Pold1, Aurélien Saghaï2, Christopher M Jones2
1Department of Soil and Environment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.
Nature Communications
|October 29, 2025
Summary
Partial denitrifiers are more common than complete denitrifiers in diverse environments. The potential to start denitrification is widespread, but completing the nitrogen cycle is a community effort.
Area of Science:
- Microbiology
- Environmental Science
- Genomics
Background:
- Denitrification is a crucial microbial process reducing nitrogen compounds.
- Complete denitrifiers perform all steps, but their prevalence and drivers are unknown.
- Understanding complete vs. partial denitrifiers is key to nitrogen cycle dynamics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the distribution and metabolic traits of complete and partial denitrifiers.
- To identify environmental factors influencing denitrification gene distribution.
- To compare the genomic potential of denitrifiers across various biomes.
Main Methods:
- Comparative genomic and metagenomic analysis of over 61,000 genomes.
- Analysis of terrestrial and aquatic metatranscriptomes.
- Investigated denitrification gene presence and abundance.
Main Results:
- Partial denitrifiers are more abundant than complete denitrifiers globally.
- The capacity to initiate denitrification is more common than its completion.
- Complete denitrifiers exhibit metabolic flexibility and favor organic acid metabolism.
Conclusions:
- Environmental factors shape the distribution of denitrification genes.
- Partial denitrification is genomically more common than complete denitrification.
- Complete denitrification relies on microbial community cooperation.
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