ArticleNature communications2023
Intracellular carbon storage by microorganisms is an overlooked pathway of biomass growth.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Animal degradation of microbial storage polyhydroxyalkanoates.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Microbial synthesis and degradation of bio-based biodegradable plastics.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- The Fragile Sink: Reconceptualizing Soil Carbon Stabilization and Its Vulnerability Under Global Change.Global change biology · 2026Review
- Lightweight Carbon From Lightweight Biomass: A Nature-Inspired Carbon Nexus for Smart Applications.Chemical record (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Review
- Article
- Microbial efficiency enhancement drives carbon sequestration in long-term organic farming systems: linking taxonomic succession to carbon use efficiency.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Enhancing soil health withFrontiers in plant science · 2026Article
- Climate warming enhances biodiversity and stability of grassland soil phosphorus-cycling microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Soil fungi remain active and invest in storage compounds during drought independent of future climate conditions.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Emerging multiscale insights on microbial carbon use efficiency in the land carbon cycle.Nature communications · 2024Review
- Unveiling the deterministic dynamics of microbial meta-metabolism: a multi-omics investigation of anaerobic biodegradation.Microbiome · 2024Article
- Choreographing root architecture and rhizosphere interactions through synthetic biology.Nature communications · 2024Review
- Predictions of rhizosphere microbiome dynamics with a genome-informed and trait-based energy budget model.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Microorganisms oxidize glucose through distinct pathways in permeable and cohesive sediments.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Semi-biological photosystem: harnessing carbon dots andSustainable microbiology · 2024Article
- Community composition and physiological plasticity control microbial carbon storage across natural and experimental soil fertility gradients.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Intracellular carbon storage by microorganisms is an overlooked pathway of biomass growth.Nature communications · 2023Article
- High wax ester and triacylglycerol biosynthesis potential in coastal sediments of Antarctic and Subantarctic environments.PloS one · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The concept of biomass growth is central to microbial carbon (C) cycling and ecosystem nutrient turnover. Microbial biomass is usually assumed to grow by cellular replication, despite microorganisms' capacity to increase biomass by synthesizing storage compounds. Resource investment in storage allows microbes to decouple their metabolic activity from immediate resource supply, supporting more diverse microbial responses to environmental changes. Here we show that microbial C storage in the form of triacylglycerides (TAGs) and polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) contributes significantly to the formation of new biomass, i.e. growth, under contrasting conditions of C availability and complementary nutrient supply in soil. Together these compounds can comprise a C pool 0.19 ± 0.03 to 0.46 ± 0.08 times as large as extractable soil microbial biomass and reveal up to 279 ± 72% more biomass growth than observed by a DNA-based method alone. Even under C limitation, storage represented an additional 16-96% incorporation of added C into microbial biomass. These findings encourage greater recognition of storage synthesis as a key pathway of biomass growth and an underlying mechanism for resistance and resilience of microbial communities facing environmental change.
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