Modeling soil metabolic processes using isotopologue pairs of position-specific 13C-labeled glucose and pyruvate
We used metabolic tracers and modeling to analyze the response of soil metabolism to a sudden temperature change from 4 to 20 °C. We hypothesized that intact soil microbial communities would exhibit shifts in pentose phosphate pathway and glycolysis activity as observed for individual microorganisms in pure culture, and that increased maintenance respiration at higher temperature would result in greater energy production and reduced carbon use efficiency (CUE). Two hours after temperature increase, respiration increased almost 10-fold.