Reviews & Analysis

An experimental evolution study shows that selection of a marine bacterium by warming favours adaptations that facilitate growth at low oxygen concentrations, linking evolutionary responses to these two key components of climate change in the ocean.

Plasmodium parasites possess a unique PEXEL sorting pathway to deliver secretory proteins into the host cells in which they reside. A new study shows the existence of independent sorting/entry complexes to detect and deliver PEXEL proteins into the parasite endoplasmic reticulum.

This Review Article discusses the importance of considering known microbial processes to inform our understanding of the role of microbial communities in ecosystem processes, and a move away from approaches based solely on correlation analyses.

Studies in Drosophila reveal that the insect homologue of the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) exerts antiviral activity against Zika virus infection in the fly brain through the induction of autophagy, providing key insights into the possible evolutionary function of STING in antiviral defence.

It has been assumed that bacteria adapt to nutrient limitation by adjusting the number of ribosomes, no matter what they are being starved for. Instead, two recent studies show that Escherichia coli uses different approaches depending on whether its growth is limited by the availability of carbon, nitrogen or phosphate.

Bacteria use sophisticated translocation systems to manipulate or kill host cells and competing bacteria. A new study shows that bacteria also deliver anti-fungal effectors.

Commensal bacteria living on the skin can enhance the virulence of a skin pathogen, changing the way we think about the role of healthy skin microbiota in disease susceptibility.

What evolutionary strategies are used by parasites to flourish for long periods within their mammalian hosts? These are questions that have been addressed by Pinger et al. in a recent study that identifies variable O-glycosylation as a novel immune-evasion mechanism employed by African trypanosomes.

Widespread use of antibiotics in animals either as growth promoters or for metaphylaxis may drive the spread of clinically relevant drug resistance genes and pathogens. New work uncovers drug resistance gene patterns from livestock across European farms and finds a correlation with agricultural antibiotic use.

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.

Rare species tend to degrade complex substrates while common species contribute most to biomass and respiration, moving us towards a solution for structure–function mapping in microbial communities.

Antibiotic resistance against β-lactams is of paramount therapeutic importance. Although such resistance is known to involve degradation by hydrolysis, the molecular details of what happens next remain unclear. A new study reveals how soil microbes perform β-lactam catabolism and how this process can support bacterial growth.

This Review Article discusses the role of bacteriophages in the marine environment, including interactions with their bacterial hosts and their impact on biogeochemical cycling, and a hypothesis to explain successional host–phage dynamics in marine systems.

The discovery and characterization of a phylum-level archaeal lineage in iron-rich hot springs—the Marsarchaeota—expands the phylogenetic depth and physiological diversity of aerobic archaea.

Comparative genomics of all known Laverania species that infect African great apes reveals interspecies gene transfer and convergent evolution, and identifies features of Plasmodium falciparum, the only human-infective species within this subgenus, that may have led to its speciation and spread globally.

Genetic integration of a humanized chemotaxis receptor unexpectedly reveals that a widely expressed immune protein is targeted by Staphylococcus aureus Panton–Valentine leukocidin in a novel way, changing our fundamental understanding of toxin–receptor biology and host–pathogen interaction.

This Review Article details various methods that can be used for phylogeny-aware analyses of microbiome datasets, together with online tutorials, including the considerations and challenges of each method depending on the research question.

The small intestine microbiome has been revealed to play a critical role in nutritional signal transduction that enables the host to adapt its fat digestion and absorption capacities, suggesting that this microbial community may serve as a target to improve conditions of over- and undernutrition.

Antibodies that potently neutralize highly diverse HIV-1 variants offer great potential for therapy and prevention. Passive administration of HIV-specific neutralizing antibodies genetically modified to have a long serum half-life has now been shown to confer long-lasting protection from infection in the rhesus macaque model.

The bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus secretes a high-affinity insulin-binding protein that mediates insulin resistance, a major driver of obesity and type 2 diabetes, in a mouse model of infection.