A conversation with Julia Brown, Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences

Wastewater monitoring enables non-invasive, population-scale tracking of community infections independent of healthcare-seeking behavior and clinical diagnosis. Metagenomic sequencing extends this cap...

Nature Microbiology, Published online: 16 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41564-025-02239-6A library of 400 phage protein-coding genes is used to find a trove of antiphage systems, revealing systems that target tail fibre and major capsid proteins.

Auxiliary metabolic genes, acquired by cyanobacterial viruses (cyanophages) from their hosts, are thought to manipulate host metabolism during infection. A recent study by Nadel et al. performed in vi...

The biological carbon pump mediates the export of particulate organic carbon from the euphotic zone to the deep ocean, where it provides the base of the food web. Although deep-sea microbial metaboli...

Author summary Viruses that infect bacteria, known as phages, are part of microbial communities and influence the abundance, diversity, and traits of their hosts. In an agriculture-related context, th...

The defence systems bacteria use to protect themselves from their viruses are mechanistically and genetically diverse. Yet the ecological conditions that predict when defences are selected for remain ...

Carr et al. show how microbial community-scale metabolic models (MCMMs) predict personalized Clostridioides difficile colonization risk and probiotic efficacy. MCMMs reveal key metabolic strategies ex...

Bacteriophage (phage) genome annotation is essential for understanding their functional potential and suitability for use as therapeutic agents. Here we introduce Phold, an annotation framework utilis...

Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 21 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00871-wIn this Review, Roux and Coclet outline current viromics approaches and discuss how they have contributed to our growing understanding of viral genomic diversity, focusing on uncultivated viruses of microorganisms.

In decades of deep-sea exploration, humans have observed only 0.001% of the deep seafloor, leaving 66% of planet Earth unseen.

Layout AWI HIPP extern, englisch

The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

With advancements in genomics technologies, a vast diversity of ‘atypical’ phages, that is, with single-stranded DNA or RNA genomes, are being uncover…

AbstractSummary. Genome-centric analysis of metagenomic samples is a powerful method for understanding the function of microbial communities. Calculating r

A listing of software, tools and databases useful for virome analysis - shandley/awesome-virome

Since the development of the Minimum Information about an Uncultured Viral Genome (MIUViG) standard (Roux et al. 2019), there has been an explosion in the number of genomic data generated on unculture...

Diverse and novel phages were recovered from anaerobic fatty acid–fed reactors. Phages linked to hosts in all three functional groups primarily consisted of generalists and temperate species, especia...

Our findings suggest that sponge microbiome diversity and, by extension, its resilience depend on the maintenance of resident bacterial community members, irrespective of their abundance. Phage-induced disturbances can significantly alter community structure by promoting the growth of opportunistic …

Understanding the origin of eukaryotic cells is one of the most difficult problems in all of biology. This Consensus View lays out guidelines to identify the gene repertoire of the Last Eukaryotic Com...

Biological nanopores can be designed for high-sensitivity sequencing of peptides and proteins. This Review discusses different approaches towards nanopore-based protein sequencing, outlining methods t...

Jim Shaw's academic website.

The study reveals that the Southern Ocean hosts a unique and largely underexplored DNA viral community. It explores the diversity of viral communities infecting all domains of life and their seasonali...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is enabled in part through the movement of DNA within two broad groups of small (<0.2 µm), diffusible nanoparticles: extracellular vesicles (EVs) and virus-like parti...

Oxygen Minimum Zones, or OMZs, are areas in the water column with less oxygen, primarily due to naturally occurring physical and biological processes within ...