Bacteria, the most abundant organisms on the planet, are outnumbered by a factor of 10 to 1
by phages that infect them. Faced with the rapid evolution and turnover of phage particles …

The remarkable diversity of genes within the pool of prokaryotic genomes belonging to the
same species or pan-genome is difficult to reconcile with the widely accepted paradigm …

A central goal in ecology is to understand the spatial scaling of biodiversity. Patterns in the
spatial distribution of organisms provide important clues about the underlying mechanisms …

As random shotgun metagenomic projects proliferate and become the dominant source of
publicly available sequence data, procedures for the best practices in their execution and …

Complex microbial ecosystems occupy the skin, mucosa and alimentary tract of all
mammals, including humans. Recent advances have highlighted the tremendous diversity of …

Bacterial strains belonging to the same species vary considerably in gene content. Thus, the
genetic repertoire of a given species (its “pan-genome”) is much larger than the gene …

Bacterial populations harbor vast genetic diversity that is continually shaped by abiotic and
biotic selective pressures, as well as by neutral processes. Individuals coexisting in the …

Microorganisms capable of actively solubilizing and precipitating gold appear to play a
larger role in the biogeochemical cycling of gold than previously believed. Recent research …

Genomic approaches to characterizing bacterial communities are revealing significant
differences in diversity and composition between environments. But bacterial distributions …

Variation in gene content has been hypothesized to be the primary mode of adaptive
evolution in microorganisms; however, very little is known about the spatial and temporal …