Functional Prediction of Novel Soil Bacteria from Grassland Ecosystems

In this study, we used formally published novel grassland soil bacterial species as research objects. Through rigorous literature screening and data integration, a phylogenetic framework of the novel species genomes was constructed using phylogenomic binning. Combined with the reported physiological and biochemical characteristics of these novel species, together with antiSMASH for secondary metabolite prediction and KEGG pathway annotation for functional pathway analysis, an integrated analysis was performed. The results revealed the core ecological functions of novel grassland soil bacterial species, including driving organic matter decomposition and nutrient cycling, mediating bacteria-fungus interactions, promoting plant growth and enhancing stress resistance, as well as exerting pathogen antagonism and biological control effects. These findings not only enrich the functional spectrum of the global soil core microbiome, but also reveal the significant niche specificity of novel grassland soil bacterial species at the functional group level. Their irreplaceability in low-redundancy functions such as complex substrate degradation and extreme environmental adaptation revises the community distribution prediction system that solely relies on macro-environmental factors, providing key microscopic evidence for high-resolution dissection of the functional distribution patterns of grassland bacterial communities.