Microbial Nitrogen Cycles: Physiology, Genomics and Applications
A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Diversity and Ecology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2023) | Viewed by 1757
Special Issue Editors
Interests: microbial ecology; nitrogen cycle; nitrification; anammox; metagenomics
Interests: biological wastewater treatment processes; anammox; denitrification
Interests: biological wastewater treatment processes; mainstream anammox; modelling wastewater treatment processes; microbiology of N-converting bacteria
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Nitrogen is one of the essential elements for the origin of life on Earth and all life forms. Nitrogen gas (N2) in the atmosphere is the largest nitrogen storage with 3.9 × 109 Tg N, but most of organisms could only use reactive forms of nitrogen (e.g., ammonium, nitrite, and nitrate) for assimilation. The highly diverse nitrogen fixation microorganisms play an important role in transforming N2 to biologically available nitrogen species. However, due to the excessive use of industrial nitrogen-based fertilizers and the low efficiency of assimilation by crops in modern agriculture, human activity has a significant effect on the amount of bioavailable ‘reactive nitrogen’ in different ecosystems. Fertilizers in modern agriculture have become a new source of reactive nitrogen, and the total quantities of nitrogen input into the ecosystem are comparable to those from terrestrial or aquatic ecosystems. At the same time, inorganic nitrogen is also a serious environmental pollutant to aquatic ecosystem, resulting in environmental hazards such as eutrophication, which seriously damages the aquatic ecosystem. Our attention to the nitrogen cycle has shifted from the challenge of increasing food production to realizing that excess inorganic nitrogen causes environmental hazards in modern agriculture.
Many breakthroughs in understanding the basic mechanisms that underlie microbial nitrogen transformations were made in past studies, but our fundamental knowledge of the communities, physiologies, metabolisms, and survival strategies of nitrogen-cycle-related microorganisms remains incomplete. Therefore, the topics of this Special Issue include (but are not limited to): (1) communities, structures, functions and dynamics of nitrogen-cycle-related microorganisms; (2) their metabolisms, niche adaption mechanisms, and survival strategies; (3) interactions with coexistent organisms and living environments; (4) and applications.
Dr. Yuchun Yang
Dr. Yanyan Jia
Dr. Mohammad Azari
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- nitrogen cycle
- nitrogen fixation
- nitrification
- anammox
- denitrification
- wastewater treatment
- metagenomics
- physiology
