R-pyocins are phage tail-like protein complexes produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa that deliver a single, lethal hit by depolarizing the target cell membrane. Unlike phages, R-pyocins lack capsids and...

Abstract. Predation is a top-down regulator of ecosystem integrity and a key driver of community structure and evolution in plants and animals. Despite our

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

Bacterial immune systems have evolved in response to diverse molecular "parasites", yet their ecological roles remain poorly understood. This Essay explores how interactions between mobile genetic ele...

<span><i>Staphylococcus aureus</i> is a common commensal of human skin and anterior nares but also a notable pathogen, causing a range of diseases from minor skin infections to serious, often fatal conditions. The global health community considers <i>S. aureus</i> a serious threat due to the rise of multi</span> …

<span><i>Burkholderia pseudomallei,</i> a gram-negative saprophyte that causes melioidosis, has been classified as a potential bioweapon, posing a serious global threat. Metabolic re-wiring, production of virulence effectors, evasion/suppression of host defenses, and modification of host cell functions co</span> …

Extreme drought events are predicted to increase with climate change, yet their impacts on ecosystem carbon dynamics under warming and elevated carbon dioxide (eCO₂) remain unclear. In a peatland experiment with five warming treatments each under ambient carbon dioxide (aCO₂) a …

Automated high-throughput screening of a prefractionated extract library of marine macroorganisms identified 239 hits (hit rate 2.5%), including a marine algal extract that blocked the Na_v1.7 channel in a fluorescent-based flux assay. Bioactivity-guided chemical investigation led to the i …

A recent study shows that the spatial organization of bacteria in thin films or near air-water interfaces is strongly impacted by a purely physical mechanism - capillary interactions. This mechanism likely plays an important role in bacterial assortment in environments like soil, which undergo wet a …

Clinicians often prescribe empirical antibiotics for critically ill, intubated children with suspected respiratory infections, contributing to antibiotic overuse and challenging antimicrobial stewardship. Our longitudinal tracheal aspirate analysis of cultures and 16S rDNA sequencing revealed significant inter-patient variability, regardless of the primary reason for intubation. We observed both concordance and discrepancies between clinical microbiology and sequencing results—gram-negative organisms aligned well between methods, whereas Streptococcus was detected in 34 of 39 samples by 16S rDNA but only once by culture. Our findings emphasize the value of longitudinal airway microbiome analysis in pediatric patients. Given the heterogeneous pathologies and diverse age groups in pediatric intensive care, future large-scale studies should account for antibiotic exposure, commensal bacterial interactions, and clinical conditions that influence microbiome dynamics. Expanding research in this area could improve our understanding of microbial shifts in critically ill children and inform more targeted treatment strategies.

Micro milling is a subtractive manufacturing method for fabricating micro-scale three-dimensional features from hard substrates like acrylic, wood, or metal. It enables rapid prototyping of biomicrofl...

Salt marshes are vital coastal ecosystems. Microbes in these environments drive nutrient cycling and support plant health, with Spartina alterniflora serving as a foundation species. This study explores viral communities associated with S. alterniflora, revealing how plant compartments and phenotypes shape viral composition. The discovery of numerous novel viruses, some potentially influencing microbes involved in key biogeochemical processes, highlights their ecological significance. Given the increasing pressures on coastal ecosystems, understanding virus-microbe-plant interactions is essential for predicting and managing ecosystem responses to environmental change.

Changes in bacterial colony morphology are common during chronic human infections and are thought to provide a survival advantage. In the human pathogen <i>Mycobacteroides abscessus</i> (MAB), a unidirectional transition from a smooth (MAB^S) to rough (MAB^R) morphotype frequentl …

Bacterial quorum sensing is often assumed to follow a strict hierarchy, limiting understanding of how multiple signals interact. This study finds that Pseudomonas aeruginosa uses a reciprocal, coopera...

Chair, School of Biological Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta The School of Biological Sciences of the Georgia Institute of Technology (“Georgia Tech”) invites applications for the pos...

Climate change is expected to impact microbes degrading organic matter in northern peatlands. Here, using a warming experiment, the authors show that communities remain stable after three years of war...

Deciphering the biology of natural microbial communities is limited by the lack of functional data. While transcriptomics enables gene expression profiling, mRNA levels often fail to predict protein abundance, the primary indicator of microbial function. ...

In vivo experiments and mathematical modelling in this work, show that alveolar macrophages lower phage densities and phage-bacteria contact rates, limiting the effectiveness of synergistic treatment ...

Bacterial biofilms, surface-attached microbial communities, grow horizontally across surfaces and vertically above them. Although a simple heuristic model for vertical growth was experimentally shown ...

Metabolically generated flow is an emergent mechanism that alleviates diffusion limits in macroscopic multicellular yeast.

In this primer, we will review the key distinctions between acute and chronic infections, between mono- and polymicrobial infections and how these distinctions work together to generate the growing cr...

Covering: 2015 to 2025Chemical crosstalk is universal to all life, niche-specific, and essential to thrive. This crosstalk is mediated by a large diversity of molecules, including metal ions, small mo...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a functionally versatile bacterium, a leading opportunistic human pathogen and a model organism in microbiology. In this Review, Letizia, Diggle and Whiteley discuss P. aerug...