All cells require a continuous supply of the universal energy currency, adenosine triphosphate (ATP), to drive countless cellular reactions. The un...

Climate-driven variation in traits is crucial for predicting ecological responses to environmental change, yet global patterns and drivers of micro...

Halogenated indole natural products have been isolated from a variety of organisms, including plants, marine algae, marine invertebrates, and bacteria. Aquatic cyanobacteria, in particular, are rich producers of brominated indoles, but their cognate biosynthetic enzymes have only been successfully linked in a limited number of natural products, such as the eagle-killing toxin aetokthonotoxin (AETX). The biosynthetic pathway for AETX involves five enzymes, two of which were previously undescribed due to incomplete annotations as hypothetical proteins. Our recent elucidation of AETX biosynthesis established functions of the two previously unknown proteins as enzymes responsible for tryptophan halogenation (AetF) and nitrile synthesis (AetD). Given their sequence novelty, we queried metagenomic data sets for these two enzymes and identified two new cyanobacterial haloindole biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) from marine sediment in Moorea, French Polynesia, and soil-derived samples in Maunawili Falls, Hawaii. We characterized the recovered BGCs by biochemically validating a new AetF homologue that exclusively halogenates free indole, rather than tryptophan as observed in AETX biosynthesis, and a new AetD homologue that harbors distinct substrate preferences, expanding the scope of nitrile biosynthesis. Additional characterization of core and accessory enzymes within these AETX-like BGCs highlights the breadth and diversity of haloindole biosynthetic machinery in cyanobacteria.

Vertical stratification in thermokarst lake sediments drives archaeal community assembly, with declining diversity, deterministic selection, and modular networks at depth. Taxa shifts (e.g., rising T....

Cross-feeding, a phenomenon in which organisms share metabolites, is frequently observed in microbial communities across the natural world. One of the most common forms is waste-product cross-feeding,...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most pressing global health problems, with plasmids playing a central role in its evolution and dissemination. Over the past decades, many studies have inv...

Genomes from metagenomes have revolutionised our understanding of microbial diversity, ecology, and evolution, propelling advances in basic science, biomedicine, and biotechnology. Assembly algorithms...

“Paradox of the sub-plankton: Plausible mechanisms and open problems underlying strain-level diversity in microbial communities” by Akshit Goyal* and Griffin Chure*. This work highlights the limitati...

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A new lasso peptide antibiotic exhibits broad-spectrum activity against Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria by interfering with bacterial protein synthesis, is unaffected by common resistanc...

Mandimycin, a polyene macrolide, exhibits strong antifungal activity and possesses a mode of action that is distinct from other compounds of this class.

Understanding the capacity of forests to adapt to climate change is of pivotal importance for conservation science, yet this is still widely unknown. This knowledge gap is particularly acute in high-b...

Microbes drive the Earth’s biogeochemical cycles. Here, Li et al. present a framework for integrating genome-inferred microbial kinetic traits into ecosystem mechanistic models, and use it to benchmar...

Nature - Community structure and metabolism through reconstruction of microbial genomes from the environment

Cold seep sediments harbor a treasure of undiscovered microbial products, reshaping our understanding of deep-sea ecosystems.

Microbial secondary metabolites are compounds produced by bacteria and fungi that are not required for their replication and unconditional survival (1, 2). While they are thus not expected to be unive...