Competition-dominated microbial interactions and adaptive mutations enhance synthetic denitrifying community functions.

Competitive interactions in six-species synthetic denitrifying communities significantly enhance denitrification rates during experimental evolution.

• Why it matters: Understanding how microbial interactions influence ecosystem functions through evolution is crucial for improving nitrogen removal and greenhouse gas mitigation strategies in diverse ecosystems.
• What they did: Researchers used experimental evolution on synthetic denitrifying communities with one, two, and six species, combined with genome and metagenome re-sequencing, protein structure prediction, and modeling to analyze adaptive mutations and community functions.
• The result: Higher species richness was linked to more adaptive mutations in genes related to nutrient transport, DNA repair, and secretion, which improved microbial fitness and denitrification performance, supporting the Red Queen hypothesis.