Heritable microbes profoundly influence insect biology, yet the traits they confer often evolve rapidly and differ among closely related symbiont s...

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.

Project Code IIAR27Ba Matlock Project Type Wet lab Research Theme Infection, Immunity, and Antimicrobial Resistance Project Summary Download Summary Plasmids are important drivers of antimicrobial res...

SLU - Science and Education for Sustainable Life

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 01 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-026-02333-3This Review summarizes recent advances in bacterial single-cell transcriptomics approaches, while also discussing technological and computational challenges remaining to be met and the need for standardization going forwards.

Noise in bacterial stress responses is often dismissed as mere randomness. While true stochasticity exists, much variation reflects hidden variables—cell state, history, and microenvironment—that are only now becoming measurable. Choudhary and Vincent review emerging tools that disentangle chance from determinism, moving microbiology toward more mechanistic and predictive frameworks.

Abstract. Plasmids are mobile genetic elements that drive horizontal gene transfer among bacteria, influencing microbial community composition and function

Abstract. Recent advances in single-cell technologies have profoundly impacted our understanding of microbial communities—shedding light on cell-to-cell va

Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...

This poster was presented at the 2025 IS-MPMI, Cologne Submitted Abstract Plasmids provide traits that can enable bacteria to adapt to unique and changing environments. Sphingomonas, an often-benefici...

In controlled greenhouse conditions, Arabidopsis thaliana plants with a hyperactive allele of the ACD6 gene have stronger pathogen defenses but are smaller and make fewer seeds, in a classic fitness t...