Question

List three chemical transformations of molecules/matter carried out by microbes during nutrient cycling that are essential for the continuation of life of Earth and explain why they are essential.

Answer 1

3 Chemical transformation of molecules carried out by microbes during nutrient cycling with their importance are:

1. Nitrogen fixing
2. Carbon fixation
3. Sulfur metabolism

Nitrigen fixation

Almost all of the nitrogen fixation that occurs on the planet is carried out by bacteria that have the enzyme nitrogenase, which combines nitogen with hydrogen to produce a useful form of nitrogen (such as ammonia). Thus, microorganisms are absolutely essential for plant and animal life forms, which cannot fix nitrogen on their own.

Nitrogen is essential for all forms of life because it is required for synthesis of the basic building blocks of life (e.g., DNA, RNA, and amino acids).

Carbon fixation

Best known example of carbon fixation is photosynthesis, a process by which energy derived from sunlight is harnessed to form organic compounds. Photosynthesis depends on the activity of microorganisms such as cyanobacteria.

The presence of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere at all is a consequence of the photosynthetic activity of ancient microbes. Carbon is critical for life because it is the essential building block of all organic compounds.

Sulfur metabolism

Microorganisms use a wide variety of inorganic and organic sulfur compounds and continue to have significant impact on their living environments, be it in oceanic, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems or the bodies of their eukaryotic hosts.

Microbial redox reactions of sulfur compounds are tightly interwoven with redox reactions of compounds containing other elements, such as carbon and nitrogen, and translate into interdependent element cycles on a global scale that, e.g., determine greenhouse gas fluxes to the atmosphere and the global climate

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