Single-cell genome sequencing of eight uncultured fungal species provides insights into the phylogenetic placement of early-diverging lineages, highlights metabolic deficiencies and identifies gene expansions correlated with parasitism and unculturability.

See Ahrendt et al.

The adaptation of APEX2-dependent proximity biotinylation for use in bacteria enables the identification of binding partners of TssA, which controls T6SS sheath assembly. This approach identifies TagA as a TssA partner that stops sheath polymerization and clamps the extended sheath to the membrane.

See Cascales et al.

Cryo-electron-microscopy imaging of hibernating ribosomes from Escherichia coli elucidates the molecular composition of these complexes and their mode of assembly, reveals how translation initiation is inhibited, and identifies a role for the ribosomal protein S1 in ribosome inactivation.

See Beckert et al.

A donor strain (XPORT) that can transfer a miniature integrative and conjugative element from Bacillus subtilis (ICEBs1) enables DNA delivery into a broad range of bacterial strains isolated from human skin and gut, and soil.

See Brophy et al.

The type VI secretion system of Serratia marcescens can deliver effector proteins that target fungi, including pathogenic Candida species, via disruption of nutrient uptake, induction of autophagy or loss of plasma membrane potential.

See Trunk et al.

Using natural tree-hole microbial communities, the authors show that bacterial abundance is related to their functional roles, with abundant phylotypes driving broad functional measures and rarer phylotypes implicated in more specialized measures.

See Rivett and Bell

Sequencing of gorilla- and chimpanzee-infecting Plasmodium species elucidates the evolutionary history of the Laverania subgenus and highlights features of the human-infecting Plasmodium falciparum species that enable parasite transmission in humans.

See Otto et al.

Sand flies acquire Leishmania during blood meals. Subsequent blood meals, even from uninfected hosts, trigger dedifferentiation of non-replicating metacyclic promastigotes to a replicative form, termed the retroleptomonad promastigote, which amplifies parasite numbers in the flies

See Serafim et al.

A human challenge trial with Campylobacter jejuni uncovers transcriptional and genomic changes during infection, highlighting pathogen factors associated with acute and persistent infection.

See Crofts et al.

Longitudinal metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analyses of human faecal microbiomes reveal similar strain-level variation within and between individuals and allow dynamic functional variation to be tracked.

See Mehta et al. and Abu-Ali et al.

Single-cell analysis reveals that Halobacterium salinarum achieve homogeneity in cell size by growing a constant size between two cell cycle events, consistent with an adder model of growth. Production of photoprotective pigments (carotenoids) by halophilic archaea, including H. salinarum, give rise to the vivid orange colour found in the salt pond at the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve, located in San Francisco Bay, an aerial view of which is presented on this month’s cover.

See Eun et al.

A new anti-phage defence system, DISARM (Defence Island System Associated with Restriction-Modification), is widespread in bacteria and archaea and protects against infection from all three major families of tailed double-stranded DNA phages.

See Ofir et al. 3, 90-98 (2017)