Adaptation is assumed to proceed by survival of the fittest. The study shows that mutation bias can drive adaptation via survival of the likeliest, steering bacteria along divergent paths to resistanc...

Adaptation is assumed to proceed by survival of the fittest. The study shows that mutation bias can drive adaptation via survival of the likeliest, steering bacteria along divergent paths to resistanc...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 15 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02389-1Purine bias is critical for gene expression in bacteria, preventing premature transcription in species that exhibit runaway transcription.

Adaptation is assumed to proceed by survival of the fittest. The study shows that mutation bias can drive adaptation via survival of the likeliest, steering bacteria along divergent paths to resistanc...

Promoters emerge three times more readily from random DNA than from genomic DNA.

Abstract. Most microbes grow in spatially structured communities, and this profoundly shapes their ecology and evolution. At the microscale, short interact

Classifying biological entities based on whether and how the two fundamental aspects physiological and evolutionary components are represented yields six types of structural organization. The resulti...

Population bottlenecks shape the evolution of cooperative traits in Myxococcus xanthus through life cycle trade-offs. This study shows that stringent bottlenecks favor growth and sporulation, while re...

From an amoeba to a blue whale

Nature Microbiology - Richard Lenski traces the legacy of Escherichia coli and how science is evolving to use this model organism in new ways.

Abstract. The bodies of macroorganisms host microbes living in multi-species communities. Sequencing approaches have revealed that different organs host di

npj Biofilms and Microbiomes - Competition between Pseudomonas species constrains ecological diversification in polymicrobial biofilms

The emergence of catalytic RNAs (ribozymes) may have set the stage for an “RNA world” preceding protein evolution. The probability of ribozyme emergen …

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 03 November 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00909-zMicrobial genomics can improve our understanding of antimicrobial resistance dynamics across ecosystems. In this Comment, Kathryn Holt emphasizes the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health and calls for greater integration of microbial genomic data through robust analytical frameworks to unravel the complexity of antimicrobial resistance dynamics.

Intrinsic resistance pathways in E. coli can be exploited to enhance antibiotic sensitivity and limit resistance evolution. This study shows that genetic inhibition of efflux pumps and cell envelope b...

The species that make up a microbial community determine its potential function. A major goal of microbial ecology is to make assemblages of microbes — synthetic communities — with targeted applicatio...

Mutational robustness is the persistence of a phenotype upon mutation. It facilitates molecular evolution and has been characterized in a variety of biological systems, but studies of prokaryotic prom...

Carbon dioxide (CO2) assimilation by the enzyme Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate Carboxylase/Oxygenase (Rubisco) underpins biomass accumulation in photosy...

Here the authors leverage a crossfeeding, engineered microbial community to demonstrate that strain abundance cycles are robust across environmental conditions. They pair this with a nonlinear dynamic model to elucidate population cycles.

Abstract. Coevolution has come to be widely understood as specific, simultaneous, reciprocal adaptation by pairs of interacting species. This strict-sense

Bacteria can gain multiple resistance mechanisms in a single step by the acquisition of multidrug-resistant (MDR) plasmids, but it is unclear how antibiotic selection during the acquisition of MDR pla...