Hi all,
Definitely a <"dead donkey"> of a thread title, but if any-one is interested there is a good open-source review article on the microbial mechanisms for nitrification, it is the science behind the cycling discussion in <"Bedside Aquarium">:
Laura E Lehtovirta-Morley <"Ammonia oxidation: Ecology, physiology, biochemistry and why they must all come together"> FEMS Microbiology Letters, Volume 365, Issue 9, May 2018. The author works at <"UEA in Norwich">.
Definitely a <"dead donkey"> of a thread title, but if any-one is interested there is a good open-source review article on the microbial mechanisms for nitrification, it is the science behind the cycling discussion in <"Bedside Aquarium">:
Laura E Lehtovirta-Morley <"Ammonia oxidation: Ecology, physiology, biochemistry and why they must all come together"> FEMS Microbiology Letters, Volume 365, Issue 9, May 2018. The author works at <"UEA in Norwich">.
....AOA vastly outnumber AOB in most soil and aquatic environments, often by orders of magnitude (Leininger et al.2006). It is estimated that there are 1 × 10^28 AOA cells in the Earth's oceans and they are some of the most numerous living organisms on Earth, accounting for up to 40% of all prokaryotes in marine ecosystems and 1%–5% in terrestrial ecosystems (Karner, DeLong and Karl 2001; Leininger et al.2006). In contrast, AOB usually dominate numerically over AOA in wastewater treatment plants and occasionally in fertilised soils (Bates et al.2011; Mussmann et al.2011). Little is known about the abundance and diversity of comammox Nitrospira, although their abundance has been reported to be comparable to, or higher than the abundance of other ammonia oxidisers.......
....The notion that ammonia oxidation is problematic at low pH was overturned by the discovery of the first obligately acidophilic ammonia oxidiser, N. devanaterra (Lehtovirta-Morley et al.2011). Originally isolated from an acidic agricultural soil, this archaeon grows autotrophically in the pH range of 4–5.5 in laboratory culture with ammonium chloride as its sole energy source. Although Nitrosotalea is the only obligately acidophilic ammonia oxidiser described to date, it is unlikely to be the only microorganism performing nitrification in acidic soils......
Cheers Darrel.........The kinetic theory of the optimal pathway length suggested that the comammox process would lead to a higher yield but lower growth rate than incomplete ammonia oxidation, giving comammox organisms a competitive advantage when ammonia concentration is low (Costa, Pérez and Kreft 2006). It is interesting to note that the half-saturation constants of many AOA and comammox are roughly within the same range.
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