Bacterial growth efficiency (BGE) is the proportion of assimilated carbon that is converted into biomass and reflects the balance between growth and energetic demands. Often measured as an aggregate property of the community, BGE is highly variable within and across ecosystems. To understand this variation, we first identified how species identity and resource type affect BGE using 20 bacterial isolates belonging to the phylum Proteobacteria that were enriched from north temperate lakes. Using a trait‐based approach that incorporated genomic and phenotypic information, we characterized the metabolism of each isolate and tested for predicted trade‐offs between growth rate and efficiency. A substantial amount of variation in BGE could be explained at broad (i.e., order, 20%) and fine (i.e., strain, 58%) taxonomic levels. While resource type was a relatively weak predictor across species, it explained >60% of the variation in BGE within a given species. A metabolic trade‐off (between maximum growth rate and efficiency) and genomic features revealed that BGE may be a species‐specific metabolic property. Our study suggests that genomic and phylogenetic information may help predict aggregate microbial community functions like BGE and the fate of carbon in ecosystems.

中文翻译：

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基于特征的方法来提高细菌的生长效率。

细菌生长效率（BGE）是被转化为生物质的同化碳的比例，反映了生长与能量需求之间的平衡。BGE通常作为社区的总体财产来衡量，在生态系统内和生态系统之间变化很大。为了了解这种变化，我们首先使用属于北温带湖泊的20种属于门氏杆菌属的细菌分离株，鉴定了物种身份和资源类型如何影响BGE。使用结合了基因组和表型信息的基于特征的方法，我们对每种分离物的代谢进行了表征，并测试了增长率和效率之间的预测权衡。BGE的大量变化可以在宽泛的（即有序的20％）和精细的（即菌株的58％）分类学水平上得到解释。尽管资源类型是物种间相对较弱的预测因子，但它解释了给定物种内BGE变化的> 60％。代谢折衷（在最大生长速率和效率之间）和基因组特征表明，BGE可能是特定物种的代谢特性。我们的研究表明，基因组信息和系统发育信息可能有助于预测总体微生物群落功能，例如BGE和生态系统中碳的命运。