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A global assessment of the structure and function of the crop microbiome is urgently needed for the development of effective and rationally designed microbiome technologies for sustainable agriculture. Such an effort will provide new knowledge on the key ecological and evolutionary interactions between plant species and their microbiomes that can be harnessed for increasing agriculture productivity.
Two recent studies report the structural basis of transcription–translation coupling in Escherichia coli, and a further study reports functionally uncoupled transcription–translation in Bacillus subtilis.
This study shows that alveolar macrophages patrol the lung to take up inhaled bacteria and that influenza virus infection can interfere with this function.
This study shows that Aspergillus fumigatus develops spatial hypoxic microenvironments during biofilm maturation that contribute to antifungal drug resistance.
This paper found that cytoplasmic control of intranuclear polarity by human cytomegalovirus leads to segregation of viral DNA from heterochromatin, thus promoting virus replication.
A recent study investigated bacterial–fungal symbioses and found that fungal responses to bacteria differed depending on whether the relationship was mutualistic or antagonistic.
In this Review, Trivedi and colleagues explore the interactions between plants, their associated microbial communities and the environment, and also discuss how those interactions shape the assembly of plant-associated microbiomes and modulate their beneficial traits.
The archaeal community, the archaeome, is now increasingly recognized as an important component of host-associated microbiomes. In this Review, Moissl-Eichinger and colleagues discuss the diversity and potential roles of the archaea associated with protists, plants and animals, highlighting the potential roles of archaea in human health and disease.
During target protection, a resistance protein physically associates with an antibiotic target to rescue the latter from antibiotic-mediated inhibition. In this Review, O’Neill and colleagues describe the different molecular mechanisms underlying target protection and emphasize the importance of this phenomenon as a cause of clinically significant antibiotic resistance.
Mycorrhizas are ubiquitous mutualistic symbioses established between plant roots and soil fungi. In this Review, Bonfante and colleagues explore the origin and evolution of mycorrhizal fungi, the diversity of their interactions with host plants and the potential of application of mycorrhizal symbioses in the development of sustainable agricultural and environmental strategies.
The last universal cellular ancestor (LUCA) is the most recent population of organisms from which all cellular life on Earth descends. In this Perspective article, Krupovic, Dolja and Koonin analyse the extant distribution of viruses across the two primary domains of life to infer the LUCA virome.
