Researchers reveal that comammox Nitrospira become dominant nitrifiers in alkaline thermokarst lakes on the Tibetan Plateau and uncover their ecological adaptations to extreme saline-alkaline environm...

Resource supply is generally considered a dominant driver of microbial diversity. Here, using a four-species bacterial consortium, we asked whether...

In 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 ce...

Recent work by Aiyer and colleagues demonstrates that cable bacteria can conserve energy and grow under anoxic conditions by transferring electrons to electrodes via extracellular electron transfer. T...

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

The intracellular space is a crowded environment where macromolecules perform distinct tasks despite pervasive "non-specific" interactions. Whether these interactions are functionally relevant and how...

In a process known as phenotypic heterogeneity or phenotypic variation, bacteria can produce distinct phenotypes within an isogenic population in response to shifting environmental conditions. Noise i...

Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) are widespread in nature and contribute to global carbon and nitrogen cycling. Although their energy production is an aerobic process, AOA occur in environments of low ...

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...

This study shows that the degradation of microbial storage polyhydroxyalkanoates is not just restricted to microorganisms by finding that some animals also have the enzymes required to break down thes...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 10 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02440-1Silvia Bulgheresi muses on how studying bacterial symbionts of worms and mammals made her question whether the absence of a nucleus enables cellular freedom, potentiating architectural innovation and functional adaptation.

Nature Reviews Microbiology, Published online: 08 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41579-026-01299-7In this Review, Vasse and Velicer explore the phylogenetic and functional diversity of predators of microorganisms, conceptualizing the forms of microbial predation along gradients, including gradients of evolutionary adaptedness for predation and privatization of prey-derived nutrients.

Nitrification is a key process in wastewater treatment and a major driver of energy consumption due to high aeration demands. The discovery of complet…

Four ways to run an open-source project—castle, clique, university, commune—and which one you're really running.

Microorganisms have long driven Earth’s oxidative sulfuric cycle using complex sulfur-oxidizing systems. This study shows that this molecular machinery first originated in the anoxic Archean eon and g...

Last weekend, the film The Odyssey was released and the Tate brothers were arrested in Florida at the behest of the British government, which seeks to extradite them to face a long list of charges. An...

Across three global Escherichia coli regulators, identical starting sequences can evolve toward many distinct strong-binding peaks, with chance, historical contingency, and evolutionary bias shaping w...

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Abstract. Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) are widespread and highly abundant in nature. Despite their typical aerobic metabolism, they thrive in ecosystems

Abstract. Reactive nitrogen fate in natural systems remains difficult to predict because pathway partitioning occurs at the stage of nitrite turnover, where rapid and tightly coupled production and co...

Microbial communities play vital roles in diverse ecosystems and are key drivers of numerous industrial or health-related applications. In many cases,…

Abstract. Many microbiological outcomes are shaped by the determinants of community composition, including the factors that allow pathogens to invade healt

Here, I argue that computational thinking and techniques are so central to the quest of understanding life that today all biology is computational biology. Computational biology brings order into our ...

RNase E localization and translation initiation coordinate transcription, translation and mRNA degradation during the life cycle of an mRNA, explaining gene- and species-specific variations in this co...

In this study, the authors show that cable bacteria perform extracellular electron transfer via direct and flavin-mediated pathways, which enables growth under anoxic conditions at rates comparable to...

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 early adaptability of microbial life.

This study shows that ecological complexity is empirically measurable, and its development in restoration can be influenced by key variables, which have mechanistic underpinnings. The foundational ro...

Genome-wide selective sweeps commonly occur in the human gut microbiome and can spread across the world within decades to produce epidemic-like population structures.

Various C₁–C₂ compounds are increasingly available through electrochemical reduction of CO2. Although not always suitable as a sole substrate, these compounds can supplement a primary substrate like ....

AutoFISH provides a cost-effective, open-source toolbox for automated smFISH, offering integrated hardware, software, and optimized protocols to streamline spatial gene-expression profiling in cell li...

Abstract. This Correspondence summarizes the session “From Petri Dish to Planet Earth: Microbiology by All” at FEMS MICRO Milan 2025 highlighting the urgen