Much of current application efforts of data science in both of ecology and genomics has been focusing on the data-driven, static but not fully dynamic understanding of those systems. In this talk, I will introduce our recent work on fusioning data- and model-driven approaches to understand the fundamental nitrogen biochemical processes in fluctuating soil redox conditions. We used a kinetic modelling approach coupled with dynamical systems theory and microbial genomic data. We show that alternative biochemical pathways play a key role in keeping nitrogen conversion and conservation properties invariant in fluctuating environments. We also predict that the biochemical network holds inherent adaptive capacity to stabilize ammonium and nitrate availability, and that the bistability in the formation of ammonium is linked to the transient upregulation of the amo-hao mediated nitrification pathway. The bistability is maintained by a pair of complementary subsystems acting as either source or sink type systems in response to soil redox fluctuations. It is further shown how elevated anthropogenic pressure has the potential to break down the stability of the system, altering substantially ammonium and nitrate availability in the soil, with dramatic effects on biodiversity.

Prof. Larry Li