ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbiological Chemistry and Geomicrobiology
This article is part of the Research TopicMicrobial Involvement in Biogeochemical Cycling and Contaminant Transformations at Land-Water Ecotones - Volume 2View all 8 articles
Depth differentiation of microbial communities and nutrient cycling functional genes in semi-arid riparian soil
Provisionally accepted
- Chang’an University, Xi'an, China
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Introduction: Microbial communities and their associated carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus metabolic processes play a role in maintaining ecological functions and nutrient cycling in riparian zones. However, systematic research on the coupling mechanisms of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus biogeochemical processes in soil profiles of semi-arid riparian soil is still limited. Methods: This study focused on the riparian zone of the Tuwei River, a typical semiarid river. Metagenomic sequencing was used to analyze the composition of microbial communities and their carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus metabolic functions across different soil depths along the river. Results: The dominant taxa across all depths and river sections were Proteobacteria (average relative abundance 49.85%) and Serratia (11.23%). Results from ANOVA and Tukey-Kramer post-hoc multiple comparison tests showed that microbial diversity significantly decreased with increasing soil depth (p < 0.05). Gene families associated with carbon fixation (accC, pccB), denitrification (nosZ, nirK), and phosphorus metabolism (purC, guaB, pyrG) were significantly enriched in surface soils and showed clear depth-dependent declines (p < 0.05). Partial Mantel tests revealed that microbial metabolic functions were significantly correlated with porosity (p < 0.05), soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus, confirming that nutrient availability and soil structure are key regulators of microbial biogeochemical functions. Conclusion: Our findings reveal that nutrient availability and soil structure jointly regulate the vertical distribution of microbial metabolic functions. These insights provide a scientific basis for ecological restoration and soil management in semi-arid riparian zones, where optimizing surface structure and nutrient inputs can stimulate microbial-driven biogeochemical cycling. Key functional taxa and genes may also serve as sensitive indicators for evaluating restoration effectiveness under climate-induced stress.
Keywords: microbial community, Metagenomic, nutrient cycling, functional gene, semi-arid riparian soil
Received: 02 Oct 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Wang, Wei, Xia, Ji, Wang, Zhang and Wang. 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: Jinxuan Wang, jinxuan.w@outlook.com
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