ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Photodegradation alleviates the lignin bottleneck for carbon turnover in terrestrial ecosystems.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 213 citations in OpenAlex.
- Topography Dependence of Terrestrial Litter-Derived Soil Respiration.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Substrate and climate determine terrestrial litter decomposition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Soil Decomposer Can Regulate the Legacy Effect of Photodegradation on Forest Marcescent Litter Decomposition, but Emerging Microplastics Disrupt This.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Alterations in microhabitat can impact litter decomposition by modifying the litter C/N ratio and regulating soil microbial activity.Frontiers in plant science · 2025Article
- Initial Litter Chemistry and UV Radiation Drive Chemical Divergence in Litter during Decomposition.Microorganisms · 2024Article
- Relative contribution of photodegradation to litter breakdown in Australian grasslands.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Interactive effects of changes in UV radiation and climate on terrestrial ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, and feedbacks to the climate system.Photochemical & photobiological sciences : Official journal of the European Photochemistry Association and the European Society for Photobiology · 2023Article
- The grassland carbon cycle: Mechanisms, responses to global changes, and potential contribution to carbon neutrality.Fundamental research · 2023Review
- Visible light-exposed lignin facilitates cellulose solubilization by lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Cost-Effective and Facile Fabrication of a Tattoo Paper-Based SERS Substrate and Its Application in Pesticide Sensing on Fruit Surfaces.Nanomaterials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Precipitation modulates the net effect of solar radiation on litter decomposition and COFrontiers in plant science · 2023Article
- The Photodegradation of Lignin Methoxyl C Promotes Fungal Decomposition of Lignin Aromatic C Measured withJournal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Natural photoredox catalysts promote light-driven lytic polysaccharide monooxygenase reactions and enzymatic turnover of biomass.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Dryland mechanisms could widely control ecosystem functioning in a drier and warmer world.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Review
- Microbial Biogeochemical Cycling of Nitrogen in Arid Ecosystems.Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2022Review
- Tree functional traits, forest biomass, and tree species diversity interact with site properties to drive forest soil carbon.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Consequences of above-ground invasion by non-native plants into restored vernal pools do not prompt same changes in below-ground processes.AoB PLANTS · 2021Article
- A starting guide to root ecology: strengthening ecological concepts and standardising root classification, sampling, processing and trait measurements.The New phytologist · 2021Review
- Influences of temperature and moisture on abiotic and biotic soil COCarbon balance and management · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A mechanistic understanding of the controls on carbon storage and losses is essential for our capacity to predict and mitigate human impacts on the global carbon cycle. Plant litter decomposition is an important first step for carbon and nutrient turnover, and litter inputs and losses are essential in determining soil organic matter pools and the carbon balance in terrestrial ecosystems. Photodegradation, the photochemical mineralization of organic matter, has been recently identified as a mechanism for previously unexplained high rates of litter mass loss in arid lands; however, the global significance of this process as a control on carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems is not known. Here we show that, across a wide range of plant species, photodegradation enhanced subsequent biotic degradation of leaf litter. Moreover, we demonstrate that the mechanism for this enhancement involves increased accessibility to plant litter carbohydrates for microbial enzymes. Photodegradation of plant litter, driven by UV radiation, and especially visible (blue-green) light, reduced the structural and chemical bottleneck imposed by lignin in secondary cell walls. In leaf litter from woody species, specific interactions with UV radiation obscured facilitative effects of solar radiation on biotic decomposition. The generalized effect of sunlight exposure on subsequent microbial activity, mediated by increased accessibility to cell wall polysaccharides, suggests that photodegradation is quantitatively important in determining rates of mass loss, nutrient release, and the carbon balance in a broad range of terrestrial ecosystems.
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