Minerals are widely assumed to protect organic matter (OM) from degradation in the
environment, promoting the persistence of carbon in soil and sediments. In this Review, we …

Microbial communities drive global biogeochemical cycles and shape the health of plants
and animals—including humans. Their structure and function are determined by ecological …

Literature covered: early 2000s to late 2017 Bacteria frequently exchange metabolites with
other micro-and macro-organisms. In these often obligate cross-feeding interactions, primary …

Environmental factors, mucosal permeability and defective immunoregulation drive
overactive immunity to a subset of resident intestinal bacteria that mediate multiple …

Resource competition and metabolic cross-feeding are among the main drivers of microbial
community assembly. Yet the degree to which these two conflicting forces are reflected in …

Organisms as simple as bacteria can engage in complex collective actions, such as group
motility and fruiting body formation. Some of these actions involve a division of labor, where …

The gut microbiome is intimately related to human health, but it is not yet known which
functional activities are driven by specific microorganisms' ecological configurations or …

Host-beneficial endosymbioses, which are formed when a microorganism takes up
residence inside another cell and provides a fitness advantage to the host, have had a …

The majority of known bacterial species cannot be cultivated under laboratory conditions.
Here we argue that the adaptive emergence of obligate metabolic interactions in natural …

Bacterial feeding has evolved toward specific evolutionary niches and the sources of energy
differ between species and strains. Although bacteria fundamentally compete for nutrients …