Ecoenzymatic Stoichiometry and Ecological Theory

The net primary production of the biosphere is consumed largely by microorganisms, whose metabolism creates the trophic base for detrital foodwebs, drives element cycles, and mediates atmospheric composition. Biogeochemical constraints on microbial catabolism, relative to primary production, create reserves of detrital organic carbon in soils and sediments that exceed the carbon content of the atmosphere and biomass. The production of organic matter is an intracellular process that generates thousands of compounds from a small number of precursors drawn from intermediary metabolism. Osmotrophs generate growth substrates from the products of biosynthesis and diagenesis by enzyme-catalyzed reactions that occur largely outside cells. These enzymes, which we define as ecoenzymes, enter the environment by secretion and lysis. Enzyme expression is regulated by environmental signals, but once released from the cell, ecoenzymatic activity is determined by environmental interactions, represented as a kinetic cascade, that lead to multiphasic kinetics and large spatiotemporal variation. At the ecosystem level, these interactions can be viewed as an energy landscape that directs the availability and flow of resources. Ecoenzymatic activity and microbial metabolism are integrated on the basis of resource demand relative to environmental availability. Macroecological studies show that the most widely measured ecoenzymatic activities have a similar stoichiometry for all microbial communities. Ecoenzymatic stoichiometry connects the elemental stoichiometry of microbial biomass and detrital organic matter to microbial nutrient assimilation and growth. We present a model that combines the kinetics of enzyme activity and community growth under conditions of multiple resource limitation with elements of metabolic and ecological stoichiometry theory. This biogeochemical equilibrium model provides a framework for comparative studies of microbial community metabolism, the principal driver of biogeochemical cycles.