Many species, including humans, host communities of symbiotic microbes. There is a vast literature on the ways these microbiomes affect hosts, but here we argue for an increased focus on how hosts...

Host plants benefit from legume root nodule symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria under nitrogen-limiting conditions. In this interaction, the hosts must regulate nodule numbers and distribution...

The RNA-guided ribonuclease CRISPR-Cas13 enables adaptive immunity in bacteria and programmable RNA manipulation in heterologous systems. Cas13s share limited sequence similarity, hindering discovery...

Breastfeeding should break down mothers' bones - here's why it doesn't

Ubiquitination pathways have crucial roles in protein homeostasis, signalling and innate immunity1-3. In these pathways, an enzymatic cascade of E1, E2 and E3 proteins conjugates ubiquitin or a...

Several immune pathways in humans conjugate ubiquitin-like proteins to virus and host molecules as a means of antiviral defence1-5. Here we studied an antiphage defence system in bacteria, comprising...

Mutagenesis is responsive to many environmental factors. Evolution therefore depends on the environment not only for selection but also in determining the variation available in a population. One...

Multicellular magnetotactic bacteria (MMB) have a surprisingly complex multicellular lifestyle. A new study in PLOS Biology combines genomics, microscopy, and isotopic labeling to show that MMB form...

A fungus uses different cell entry strategies, depending on its host's hibernation status.

Millions of hibernating bats across North America have died from white-nose syndrome (WNS), an emerging disease caused by a psychrophilic (cold-loving) fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, that...

TnpB nucleases represent the evolutionary precursors to CRISPR-Cas12 and are widespread in all domains of life. IS605-family TnpB homologs function as programmable RNA-guided homing endonucleases in...

Understanding the drivers of respiratory pathogen spread is challenging, particularly in a timely manner during an ongoing epidemic. In this work, we present insights that we obtained using daily...

Consortia of multicellular magnetotactic bacteria (MMB) are currently the only known example of bacteria without a unicellular stage in their life cycle. Because of their recalcitrance to cultivati...

Microbiome research is now demonstrating a growing number of bacterial strains and genes that affect our health1. Although CRISPR-derived tools have shown great success in editing disease-driving...

Changes in the gut microbiome have pivotal roles in the pathogenesis of acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) after allogenic haematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT)1-6. However, effective...

Fungi are among the most diverse and ecologically important kingdoms in life. However, the distributional ranges of fungi remain largely unknown as do the ecological mechanisms that shape their...

In all organisms, regulation of gene expression must be adjusted to meet cellular requirements and frequently involves helix-turn-helix (HTH) domain proteins1. For instance, in the arms race between...

In the period between 5,300 and 4,900 calibrated years before present (cal. BP), populations across large parts of Europe underwent a period of demographic decline1,2. However, the cause of this...

Scientists edit the genes of gut bacteria in living mice

The catastrophic loss of aquatic life in the Central European Oder River in 2022, caused by a toxic bloom of the haptophyte microalga Prymnesium parvum (in a wide sense, s.l.), underscores the need...