Antibiotics are powerful drugs used in the treatment of bacterial infections. The inappropriate
use of these medicines has driven the dissemination of antibiotic resistance (AR) in most …

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the sharing of genetic material between organisms that are
not in a parent–offspring relationship. HGT is a widely recognized mechanism for adaptation …

Plasmids can mediate horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistance, virulence genes, and
other adaptive factors across bacterial populations. Here, we analyze genomic composition …

Cyanobacteria are among the most diverse prokaryotic phyla, with morphotypes ranging
from unicellular to multicellular filamentous forms, including those able to terminally (ie …

Background Microbial inhabitants of soils are important to ecosystem and planetary
functions, yet there are large gaps in our knowledge of their diversity and ecology. The …

Bacterial virulence is highly dynamic and context-dependent. For this reason, it is
challenging to predict how molecular changes affect the growth of a pathogen in a host and …

Accessory genes are variably present among members of a species and are a reservoir of
adaptive functions. In bacteria, differences in gene distributions among individuals largely …

In this New York Times bestseller and longlist nominee for the National Book Award,“our
greatest living chronicler of the natural world”(The New York Times), David Quammen …

Microbes and microbiology are seldom encountered in philosophical accounts of the life
sciences. Although microbiology is a well-established science and microbes the basis of life …

A central challenge in microbial community ecology is the delineation of appropriate units of
biodiversity, which can be taxonomic, phylogenetic, or functional in nature. The term …