ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbiological Chemistry and Geomicrobiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1645559
The Interplay of Nitrogen Sources and Viral Communities in the Biodegradation of Atrazine in Agricultural Soils
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenyang, China
- 2Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States
- 3The Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States
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Atrazine is a widely used herbicide, and its degradation is primarily mediated by microbial activity.However, the interplay between nutrient availability and viral infections on microbial degradation of atrazine remains unexplored. Here, we investigated atrazine degradation under different nitrogen amendments (ammonium, nitrate, and urine) and the influence of soil viruses (intracellular and extracellular viruses). The results showed that atrazine degradation was greater with the addition of extracellular viruses without exogenous nitrogen sources. The added nitrogen sources (nitrate and urine) completely inhibited atrazine degradation. Ammonium impeded atrazine degradation, which was promoted with the addition of intracellular viruses. The metagenomic-based evidence revealed that nitrogen amendments significantly alter bacterial and viral community composition. Peduoviridae emerged as the predominant viral family, with its prevalence and temperate phage ratio strongly influenced by nitrogen availability, underscoring the role of nutrient dynamics in shaping virus-host interactions. The presence of viruses selectively enriched atrazine degradation genes and auxiliary metabolic genes (AMGs) associated with key microbial metabolic pathways, revealing potential mechanisms by which viral infections contribute to pollutant biodegradation. The findings highlight the complex interplay between viral predation, microbial adaptation, and nitrogen-driven shifts in microbial community structure and function, offering new perspectives on how viruses shape bioremediation processes in agroecosystems.
Keywords: Atrazine degradation, Viral lifestyles, Nitrogen amendment, AMGs, Top-down control
Received: 12 Jun 2025; Accepted: 03 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Radosevich, Yang, Zhang, Xie and Liang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaolong Liang, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenyang, China
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