Substantial efforts to characterize the structural and functional diversity of soil, plant and
insect-associated microbial communities have illuminated the complex interacting domains …

Quantitatively linking the composition and function of microbial communities is a major
aspiration of microbial ecology. Microbial community functions emerge from a complex web …

Microbiome breeding is a new artificial selection technique that seeks to change the genetic
composition of microbiomes in order to benefit plant or animal hosts. Recent experimental …

Directed evolution has been used for decades to engineer biological systems at or below
the organismal level. Above the organismal level, a small number of studies have attempted …

Microbial communities often perform important functions that depend on inter-species
interactions. To improve community function via artificial selection, one can repeatedly grow …

Microbial communities are capable of performing diverse functions with important
bioindustrial and medical applications. One approach to improving a community function is …

We develop a method to artificially select for rhizosphere microbiomes that confer salt
tolerance to the model grass Brachypodium distachyon grown under sodium salt stress or …

The potential for artificial selection at the community level to improve ecosystem functions
has received much attention in applied microbiology. However, we do not yet understand …

With the rapidly increasing popularity of 5G mobile technology, the effect of radiofrequency
radiation on human health has caused public concern. This study explores the effects of a …

Artificial selection is a promising way to improve microbial community functions, but previous
experiments have only shown moderate success. Here, we experimentally evaluate a new …