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Pan-genome analyses of clinical pneumococcal strains identify categories of essential genes and show that gene essentiality depends on strain genetic background.
In situ cryo-ET imaging and live-cell fluorescence microscopy reveal that septal peptidoglycan architecture and divisome activity modulate bacterial morphogenesis in Escherichia coli.
Rational design of live-attenuated RNA viruses with potential as vaccines is enabled by identification of sequence rules for zinc finger antiviral protein.
Tropical forests store vast amounts of carbon that might be liberated as temperatures increase. A 2-year experiment of tropical forest soil warming reveals that microbial diversity is reduced, but enzyme activity is increased, resulting in CO2 emissions threefold greater than modelling predicts.
A newly discovered benzoxaborole prodrug AN15368 cures Trypanosoma cruzi infection (the cause of Chagas disease) in mice and in naturally infected non-human primates.
Longitudinal sampling, modelling and genomic analyses of stool samples from Malawian adults reveal how antimicrobial exposure and hospitalization promote ESBL-Enterobacterales colonization.
Wildfires have unknown impacts on soil microbes and biogeochemistry. Using metagenomics across forest burn gradients, here the authors show severity-dependent losses in microbiome diversity and functional shifts that underpin post-fire survival.
Antibiotic resistance and virulence factors are identified in Mycobacterium abscessus by integrating proteome-wide structural modelling, GWAS analyses and mapping gene interaction networks for 331 clinical isolates.
Members of the murine and human gut microbiome can interact with dietary cholesterol. In particular, Bacteroides sulfotransferase activity can convert cholesterol to cholesterol sulfate and impact cholesterol levels in vivo.
Retrons are reverse transcriptase-based bacterial genetic elements with a role in antiphage defence. Here the authors investigate the structure and function of retron Ec86, providing insight into retron-based genome editing systems.
Characterization of a biosynthetic pathway for the sulfonation of steroidal metabolites, such as cholesterol, by gut bacteria may have implications for immune cell trafficking and inflammatory bowel disease.
Choanoflagellates are the closest living unicellular relatives of animals and are important bacterivorous predators in the ocean. Here the authors show that the microbiome of this predator includes an obligate, host resource-dependent bacterial associate.
A plant peptide binds to haem, thereby reducing the availability of haem and inducing an iron-starvation response in rhizobia that results in iron import for nitrogenase activity.
Experimental evolution of Escherichia coli in an insect host reveals that a single mutation in the carbon catabolite repression pathway can transform a non-symbiotic microbial species into an insect mutualist.
Analysis of gut microbiota of mothers and its neonates—as part of the BARNARDS study—reveals associations between β-lactamase gene carriage and neonatal sepsis risk in low-income settings.
RNA-interference loss can cause hypermutation in clinical isolates of the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans, impacting antifungal drug resistance.