{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,12]],"date-time":"2026-10-12T16:54:42Z","timestamp":1791824082506,"version":"4.3.4"},"reference-count":50,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,21]],"date-time":"2026-09-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1789948800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":263,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100012166","name":"National Key Research and Development Program of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2022YFF0713100"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2022YFF0713100"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100012166","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100012166","name":"National Key Research and Development Program of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2019YFC1803600"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2019YFC1803600"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100012166","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["22176186"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["22176186"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Fujian Province","award":["2024J011016"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2024J011016"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,14]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>Widespread and chronic heavy metal pollution resulting from industrial activities has compromised the sustainability of soil ecosystems. Increasing and stabilizing soil carbon storage is central to soil development, but how remediation reshapes soil carbon cycling processes during the mitigation of heavy-metal contamination remains unclear. Here, we tracked genome-scale microbial metabolism, community turnover, and phenotype-level physiological responses during a 120-day remediation of heavy metal-contaminated soils with several decades of pollution histories and resolved their dynamic interplay with microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) and CO2 emissions. We found that heavy-metal stress accelerated microbial respiratory carbon loss from soils, with contaminated soils exhibiting significantly higher cumulative CO\u2082 emissions than both nearby uncontaminated and remediated soils. Metagenomic profiles were enriched in oxidative-stress defense and metal-detoxification functions, consistent with elevated maintenance costs that may contribute to enhanced respiration. In contrast, remediation significantly reduced soil CO\u2082 emissions while increasing microbial growth rate and CUE, indicating a shift toward greater soil carbon storage potential. Raman-based in situ monitoring further showed that biomolecules associated with microbial growth, including phospholipids, nucleic acids, and proteins, increased progressively throughout the remediation process. Structural equation modelling further revealed that microbial physiological traits, particularly metabolic activity and intracellular biomolecular content, exerted stronger direct effects on CUE than community traits, including community stability and life-history strategy. These results identify microbial physiological traits as a key link between environmental stress and soil carbon cycling. Together, these findings suggest that remediating heavy metal-contaminated soils may represent an underappreciated pathway for enhancing terrestrial carbon sequestration.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/ismejo\/wrag250","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,19]],"date-time":"2026-09-19T11:39:56Z","timestamp":1789817996000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Microbial physiological trait shifts link heavy metal remediation to enhanced soil carbon storage potential"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"20","author":[{"given":"Rui","family":"Xue","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Regional and Urban Ecology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Xiamen, Fujian 361021,","place":["China"]},{"name":"College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jian","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Ecology and Resource Use of the Mongolian Plateau & Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecology, School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University , Hohhot, Inner Mongolia 010021 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Shilin","family":"Hu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Regional and Urban Ecology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Xiamen, Fujian 361021,","place":["China"]},{"name":"Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei, Anhui 230026 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jiazhi","family":"Ding","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Regional and Urban Ecology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Xiamen, Fujian 361021,","place":["China"]},{"name":"College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , 19A Yuquan Road, Beijing 100049 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Cheng","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Environmental Microbiomics Research Center, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University , Guangzhou, Guangdong 510006 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wenshun","family":"Ke","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Environment and Ecology, Hunan Agricultural University , Changsha, Hunan 410128 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chaoran","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Adaptation and Improvement, Henan University , Kaifeng, Henan 475004 ,","place":["China"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Philippe","family":"Corvini","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute for Chemistry and Bioanalytics, FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland , 4132 Muttenz ,","place":["Switzerland"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0708-8899","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Li","family":"Cui","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Regional and Urban Ecology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Xiamen, Fujian 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