Decomposition of Microbial Necromass Is Divergent at the Individual Taxonomic Level in Soil

The turnover of microbial biomass plays an important part in providing a significant source of carbon (C) to soil organic C. However, whether the decomposition of microbial necromass (non-living microbial biomass) in the soil varies at the individual taxa level remains largely unknown. To fill up these gaps, we compared the necromass decomposition of bacterial and archaeal taxa by separating live microbial biomass with 18O-stable isotope probing from dead microbial biomass in soil. Our results showed that most of the microbial necromass at the operational taxonomic unit level (88.51%), which mainly belong to Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, and Proteobacteria, decomposed sig…

Strategies for Exploring Functions from Dynamic Combinatorial Libraries

Strategies for Exploring Functions from Dynamic Combinatorial Libraries

Dynamic combinatorial chemistry (DCC) is a powerful approach for creating complex chemical systems, giving access to the studies of complexity and exploration of functionality in synthetic systems. However, compared with more advanced living systems, the man‐made chemical systems are still less functional, due to their limited complexity and insufficient kinetic control. Here we start by introducing strategies to enrich the complexity of dynamic combinatorial libraries (DCLs) for exploiting unexpected functions by increasing the species of building blocks and/or templates used. Then, we discuss how dynamic isomerization of photo‐switchable molecules help DCLs increase and alter the systemic…