All extant eukaryotes descend from the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA), which is
thought to have featured complex cellular organization. To gain insight into LECA biology …

The gut microbiome is a dense and metabolically active consortium of microorganisms and
viruses located in the lower gastrointestinal tract of the human body. Bacteria and their …

Identifying and characterizing mobile genetic elements in sequencing data is essential for
understanding their diversity, ecology, biotechnological applications and impact on public …

Viruses are widely recognized as critical members of all microbiomes. Metagenomics
enables large-scale exploration of the global virosphere, progressively revealing the …

Earth's life may have originated as self-replicating RNA, and it has been argued that RNA
viruses and viroid-like elements are remnants of such pre-cellular RNA world. RNA viruses …

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events highlights the need to understand how
soil microbiomes respond to such disturbances. Here, metagenomics was used to …

While decomposition of organic matter by bacteria plays a major role in nutrient cycling in
terrestrial ecosystems, the significance of viruses remains poorly understood. Here we …

Viruses are considered to be the most abundant biological entities on earth. They also
display striking genetic diversity as emphatically demonstrated by the recent advances of …

Plasmids are mobile genetic elements found in many clades of Archaea and Bacteria. They
drive horizontal gene transfer, impacting ecological and evolutionary processes within …

Metatranscriptome sequencing expanded the known diversity of the bacterial RNA virome,
suggesting that additional riboviruses infecting bacterial hosts remain to be discovered …