Microbiology

Amino acid auxotrophy, the loss of biosynthetic potential for an amino acid, is a highly prevalent feature of microbial life, yet the evolutionary processes driving its distribution in nature remain u...

In microbial communities, evolutionary processes can lead to loss of biosynthetic pathways, creating metabolic dependencies. The Black Queen Hypothesi…

This Perspective explores why microbiome members perform partial metabolism of substrates and suggests that proteome efficiency is a driver of collective microbiome metabolism.

Historically, microbiology has been markedly concerned with pathogens and their modes of action. Upon Koch’s revolutionary finding that microorganisms can be causal of disease, understandably, there w...