β-glucosidase genes differentially expressed during composting
Abstract Background: Cellulose degradation by cellulase is brought about by complex communities of interacting microorganism, which significantly to the cycling of carbon on a global scale. β-Glucosidase is the rate-limiting enzyme of degradation of cellulose. Thus, analysis of expression of genes involved in cellulose degradation and regulation of β-glucosidase gene expression in composting is beneficial to a better understanding of cellulose degradation mechanism. According to our previous researches, we present the hypothesis that “microbial functional communities differentially regulate the expression of glucose-tolerant β-glucosidase and glucose sensitive β-glucosidase (up or down regulation) to adapt to the changes in cellulose degradation.” Results: Here, the functional microbial community structure and function change in association with cellulose degradation during the process of natural and inoculated composts was investigated by metatranscriptome and DNA clone library. Compared with inoculated compost, cellulose degradation was obviously inhibited during natural composting. Especially, the cooling phase of natural compost exhibited carbon catabolite repression (CCR) effect due to high concentration of glucose and cellobiose. The expression of genes encoding endoglucanase and exoglucanase were significantly down-regulation, while the CCR has no effect on β-glucosidase genes expression levels. But functional microbial community composition changed significantly, the composition of glucose-tolerant β-glucosidase increased. Conclusions: These results indicated that microbial functional communities differentially regulate the expression of glucose tolerant β-glucosidase (up regulation) and non-glucose tolerant β-glucosidase (down regulation) under CCR. This work provides a frame work to predict how functional microbial communities will respond to cellulose degradation conditions changes.