Genome-scale metabolic models reveal phylogenetic conservation of amino acid fermentation-linked metabolic traits in soil bacteria

Genome-scale metabolic models built from 550 soil metagenome-assembled genomes show phylogenetic conservation of fermentation-linked amino-acid traits for eight metabolites, including pyruvate and ethanol.

• Why it matters: Soil community heterogeneity limits recovery of high-quality MAGs, which in turn restricts flux balance analysis and mechanistic links between taxa and ecosystem-level metabolic fluxes.
• What they did: The study assembled GEMs for 550 MAGs (497 bacterial, 53 archaeal) from 94 soil samples across the continental United States, then used FBA to estimate uptake and secretion of 44 metabolites and test phylogenetic signal.
• The result: Overall bacterial phylogenetic signal was weak (median r = 0.029), but eight metabolites were significantly conserved, and many bacterial MAGs imported branched-chain amino acids with some also secreting pyruvate and ethanol, suggesting candidate cross-feeding.

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