It could never be found until recently, in a fish tank a few floors below a university microbiology department: one single organism able to perform the complete process of nitrification.

Recently, the research team led by Professor WU Lifang from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed copper pyrazole, a novel nitrification inhibitor, and ...

Farmers around the world rely on nitrogen fertilizers to sustain crop production, but in many alkaline soils a large share of that nitrogen is rapidly lost before plants can use it. A new study ...

An experimental simulation of near-future changes in ocean chemistry suggests that aquatic nitrogen cycles could be profoundly disrupted, altering the basic structure of Earth's food webs. Nitrogen is ...

Chemolithoautotrophic nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) gain energy from the oxidation of nitrite to nitrate, which is the second step of nitrification and thus represents a major biogeochemical ...

Nitrification is a microbially mediated aerobic biological process in the nitrogen cycle whereby reduced inorganic nitrogen (primarily ammonium, NH₄⁺) is oxidized to nitrate (NO₃⁻) via nitrite (NO₂⁻).

But different microbes have distinct roles to play, and environmental factors influence activity. Under our feet, in the soil, is a wealth of microbial activity. Just like humans have different ...