Prokaryotic life has dominated most of the evolutionary history of our planet, evolving to
occupy virtually all available environmental niches. Extremophiles, especially those thriving …

The deep ocean below 200 m water depth is the least observed, but largest habitat on our
planet by volume and area. Over 150 years of exploration has revealed that this dynamic …

Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) is a microbial process in which NH4+ is
oxidized to N2 gas with NO2− as an electron acceptor. The anammox process is mediated …

Soil provides a multitude of services that are essential to a healthily functioning biosphere
and continuity of the human race, such as feeding the growing human population and the …

Forty years after the image of the Mediterranean transformed into a giant salty lake was first
conceived, the fascinating history of the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) still arouses great …

Single-stranded (ss) DNA viruses are a major component of the earth virome. In particular,
the circular, Rep-encoding ssDNA (CRESS-DNA) viruses show high diversity and …

Microbes are difficult to culture. Consequently, the primary source of information about a
fundamental evolutionary topic, life's diversity, is the environmental distribution of gene …

The marine environment covers almost three quarters of the planet and is where evolution
took its first steps. Extremophile microorganisms are found in several extreme marine …

Life at high salt concentrations is energetically expensive. The upper salt concentration limit
at which different dissimilatory processes occur in nature appears to be determined to a …

Microbial activities drive the global nitrogen cycle, and in the past few years, our
understanding of nitrogen cycling processes and the micro-organisms that mediate them …