Microbial communities articles from across Nature Portfolio

As part of a large placebo-controlled randomized controlled trial of iron or micronutrient powders given to 923 children in rural Bangladesh for 3 months, the authors evaluated changes to the gut microbiome and identified no changes in diversity or composition. However, potentially pathogenic changes were seen in unadjusted analysis.

Assessing microbial water quality is an important approach to monitor potential risks to human and environmental health. The use of two human faecal bacteria as molecular indicators is shown to be more sensitive than conventional measures for detecting contamination on an extensive set of data.

Prebiotics selectively modulate the composition or function of the microbiome, thereby improving health. This Expert Recommendation presents a framework to classify defined compounds as prebiotics, discusses principles of host microbial ecology, and proposes statistical methods to link microbiome changes with health outcomes to infer causality.

The microbiome in the uropygial gland and feathers of the bird Pachycephala schlegii has protective properties. Here, the authors report an Amycolatopsis species in this microbiome that produces antimicrobials including two novel compound families.

In this study Unger et al. show how the structure of aliphatic glucosinolates, defense metabolites in Brassicaceae plants, controls recruitment of specific metabolic networks of leaf bacteria, shedding light on broader ecological roles of defenses.

Pain from conditions such as endometriosis could be alleviated if the gut’s resident bacteria can be understood and tamed.

Nature Reviews Microbiology attended the 19th biennial meeting of the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) in Cape Town, South Africa.

Science has a history of exploitation and extraction. Microbiologists have the chance to take a different approach.

Bacteria and fungi in fermented favourites such as kimchi are also present in the human microbiome.