Multiomic experiments using defined and native gut communities reveal that complex dietary glycans mediate the dominance of Prevotellaceae in non-industrialized gut metagenomes through signalling-medi...

Viral-induced DNA damage triggers both eukaryotic and prokaryotic innate immunity. Here, we report that self-DNA ends generated routinely during normal termination of bacterial replication suffice to ...

Phage therapy is providing a benefit to a limited number of people. To date those who have received phage therapy typically have done so via an IND expanded access mechanism, colloquially referred to ...

Cyclic oligonucleotide–based antiphage signaling systems (CBASS) are bacterial immune pathways evolutionarily related to cGAS-STING (cyclic GMP-AMP synthase–stimulator of interferon genes) in humans. ...

The conservation of immune systems from prokaryotes to eukaryotes can guide discovery of immunity genes across the tree of life. Most studies to date have focused on metazoan systems, while the extent...

Cultured phage collections provide essential access to viral biology, but they capture only a small and biased fraction of natural phage diversity. Key barriers to diverse phage isolation are likely t...

How did modernizing cheesemaking change the microbes inside the cheese? By sequencing preserved traditional Alpine cheese wheels spanning 142 years from a single Alpine dairy, Somerville et al. trace ...

Abstract. Of the more than 600 subglacial lakes identified in Antarctica thus far, Whillans Subglacial Lake and Mercer Subglacial Lake are the only lakes t

Bacterial defence systems are diverse and form major barriers to horizontal gene transfer and bacteriophage (phage) infection. Though restriction-modification systems were the first such defences disc...

Phage Tn-seq uses Tn5 transposon mutagenesis with anti-CRISPR-based selection and deep sequencing as a method to generate unbiased, genome-wide mutations across diverse phages

Using affinity purification-mass spectrometry, these authors identified the Healer system, a phage two-protein effector that repairs CRISPR-mediated DNA breaks via homologous recombination.

Retrotransposons can infect neighboring cells using a mechanism that relies on a small fusogen-like protein rather than on the envelope protein that is typically required for infection.

Himpich et al. show how the Druantia III-A defense system detects and fends off invading phage DNA. The DruE component recognizes exposed single-stranded DNA and unwinds flanking duplex regions 3′-to-...

Abstract. Toxin-antitoxin systems (TAs) are widespread in bacterial genomes. Yet, their integration, persistence, and impact in chromosome dynamics remain

CRISPR-Cas provides RNA-mediated adaptive immunity, but how its first RNA-guided effector arose is unclear. In this study, we report the discovery of Viral Interference Programmable Repeat (VIPR) syst...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 17 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02449-6In this Perspective, Levin and Wang give a brief history of bacterial growth rate and discuss how it is connected to nutrient availability and macromolecule synthesis, with a focus on (p)ppGpp as a central hub regulating resource allocation and, indirectly, growth rate at the single-cell level.

Viruses are ubiquitous mobile genetic elements that are obligate symbionts of cellular life forms and replicate exclusively within host cells. The ...

Inflammation induces interchromosomal DNA interactions that bring parent genes into close proximity, facilitating the formation of chimeric mRNAs that encode physiologically relevant, functional prote...

Here the authors determine the structure and mechanism of the QatABCD anti-phage defense system, showing how the QueCfamily protein QatC recognizes QatB to enable bacterial antiviral immunity and highlighting a conserved role for QueC-family proteins in protein modification.

Inside cells, DNA is intimately associated with proteins, forming chromatin. The protein constituents of chromatin vary across the tree of life: histones are the principal building blocks of chromatin...

The T7 bacteriophage deactivates bacterial defence systems through T7K phosphorylation of nearly all host and phage proteins during infection.

Abstract. Time-resolved transcriptomic profiling has been used to study phage–host interactions for more than a decade. However, the resulting datasets are

Huiting, Shmidov, et al. report on a CBASS type encoding a phospholipase (CapV) effector that can successfully limit the late stage of phage replication while maintaining cell viability, rather than i...