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Urban informal settlements, more commonly known as slums, are hotspots for the environmental transmission of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Here, the authors discuss the behavioural, environmental and structural reasons for this and propose that improvements in water and waste infrastructure, as well as legal and economic incentives, could limit environmental AMR dissemination.
In this Perspective, Lopez-Garcia and Moreira update the Syntrophy hypothesis for the origin of eukaryotes, considering recent advances in the archaeal field about the physiology, metabolism, ecology and evolution of these microbes. They also compare and contrast their model with alternative ones, such as the classical Searcy’s and Hydrogen hypotheses and the more recent Reverse Flow and Entangle–Engulf–Endogenize models, and discuss model predictions and ways to test these.
This Perspective discusses the emergence and connectedness of antimicrobial resistance across One Health and Global Health levels, as well as potential strategies for mitigating the burden of such resistance in human and environmental health.
A Perspective discussing the factors that have contributed to the success and failure of point-of-care tests for resource-limited settings and the challenges and opportunities that exist for developing new infectious disease diagnostics.
This Perspective argues that microbiome research needs to consider the different philosophical definitions of function to avoid confusion in the field, and uses the hologenome concept as an example.
The colonization resistance paradigm is explored, with a focus on the benefits and limitations of current murine models used to assess the role of the microbiota in enteric infection.
This Perspective debates the concept of enterotypes and their use to characterize the gut microbiome, and provides a classifier and standardized methodology to aid cross-study comparisons.
This Perspective argues that Anna Karenina effects (that is, changes resulting in increased variation in community composition under stress) are a common and important response of animal microbiomes that have been under-reported.
This Perspective looks at how microbial anabolism and the soil microbial carbon pump control microbial necromass accumulation and stabilization; the ‘entombing effect’.
In this Perspective, Suez and Elinav describe the potential for therapeutic approaches based on the use of metabolites secreted, modulated or degraded by the gut microbiome, and issues that will be critical for their implementation.
This Perspective describes how lessons learned from traditional probiotics will inform the next generation of probiotics and live biotherapeutic products and the microorganisms suitable for development, and the regulatory framework required to do so.
Amalgamation of population genetic theory and models of horizontal gene transfer suggest that pangenomes in prokaryotes result from adaptive, not neutral, evolution.