A life-history axis of resource acquisition in bacteria: depolymerisation versus uptake

A genomic ratio distinguishing depolymerisation-optimised versus uptake-optimised strategies is strongly phylogenetically structured across more than 249,000 bacterial genomes.

• Why it matters: Microbial decomposition depends on costly extracellular enzymes versus cheaper uptake, but the investment balance across bacterial diversity has been hard to quantify.
• What they did: Using genomic repertoires for carbohydrate depolymerisation and uptake, the authors built a simple ratio and applied it to more than 249,000 environmental and host-associated bacterial genomes.
• The result: In an 18-month field-scale plant litter decomposition experiment, uptake-optimised bacteria dominated early decomposition and shifted toward depolymerisation-optimised bacteria later, matching habitat and successional stage patterns.