Ocean acidification can reduce phytoplankton phosphorus content, especially under phosphate limitation, which could reshape marine nutrient balance and phosphorus cycling, according to long-term exper...

Symbiotic relationships of microorganisms are predicted and cataloged with a machine learning tool.

by Karen G. Lloyd — The story behind some extremely long-lived microbial cells.

Researchers are racing to culture a menagerie of exotic organisms and finding lots of surprises along the way.

I follow Cameron Thrash on social media as he regularly posts links to interesting microbial ecology papers.

An enrichment culture from hot spring sediments in China suggests that Ca. M. sphaerolipidus uses a suite of metabolic pathways to convert long-chain fatty acids such as oleic acid to methane, a proce...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 15 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02490-5An enrichment culture from hot spring sediments in China suggests that Ca. M. sphaerolipidus uses a suite of metabolic pathways to convert long-chain fatty acids such as oleic acid to methane, a process they term liparotrophy.

Scientific Reports - Metabolic switching between inorganic and organic phosphorus sustains microbial activity in an ultraoligotrophic ocean

Alkaline vents have dominated a class of hypotheses for the origins of life since their discovery a quarter of century ago, but advances in underst...

Abstract. Anaerobic carbon transformation in freshwater sediments drives substantial methane emissions globally, yet the microbial taxa linking complex car

Elemental sulfur reduction is a key process in anaerobic ecosystems and the global sulfur cycle. Although elemental sulfur serves as a terminal electron acceptor in microbial respiration, the molecula...

Viruses dominate the deep-ocean biosphere (>200-m depth) yet remain profoundly understudied. As the most abundant biological entities on Earth, they govern the geochemistry, evolution, and ecology ...

University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!

Authigenic minerals reflect specific respiration and fermentation pathways leading to diagenetic redistribution of iron and carbon isotopes during burial, according to an in-depth characterization of ...

Formation and burial of pyrite (iron sulfide) in marine sediments exert a fundamental control on atmospheric oxygenation and seawater buffering ove...

Fungi act as critical biological carbon storage reservoirs in soil ecosystems, but what about marine sediments? This study shows that marine fungi promote carbon storage in arctic fjord sediment, hot-...

Phylogenomic reconstruction of the proteome of the last eukaryotic common ancestor sheds light on the origin of eukaryotes, indicating an important role of horizontal transfer of genes from diverse ba...

While most newly formed organic carbon in the dark ocean is derived from chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, 17% also comes from an alternative pathway called anaplerosis that is related to the tric...

Abstract. Chitin, a major structural component of arthropod exoskeletons, is an abundant carbon and nitrogen source in marine ecosystems. While its degrada

The burial of terrestrially derived organic carbon in coastal marine sediments greatly increased during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, probably helping to draw down a large portion of carbon r...

Carbon comproportionation reactions are an underexplored class of carbon redox processes relevant to microbial energy conservation Methane-carbon monoxide comproportionation to acetate is exergon...

Nature - Integrated palaeontological, sedimentological and geochemical analyses of ancient rocks from Australia show that early eukaryotes were largely restricted to oxygenated benthic habitats,...

The study shows that life began using molybdenum and tungsten enzymes as early as 3.7–3.1 billion years ago. Study reveals that key metabolic processes arose despite scarce metals and highlighting the...

Understanding carbon cycling requires simplifying bacterial diversity into functional groups defined by genetic signatures.

Microorganisms have historically been classified as obligate aerobes or anaerobes, facultative anaerobes, or microaerophiles, reflecting differences in respiratory strategies dictated by the use of ox...

All cells need energy to perform their functions. This primer introduces energy metabolism in bacteria, with a focus on key pathways and examples from model organisms, while acknowledging that bacteri...

A novel slowly evolving lineage of the Desulforudis-clade, Desulfosceptrum tomskiensis sp. nov. gen. nov., has been isolated in pure culture and described. Desulforudis audaxviator itself, a paradigm...