Plants are colonized by a multitude of micro-organisms, collectively called “microbiome,”
and which play essential roles in the niches they inhabit. The potential of the microbiome …

Bacteria–phage coevolution, the reciprocal evolution between bacterial hosts and the
phages that infect them, is an important driver of ecological and evolutionary processes in …

Evolution is the hallmark of life. Descriptions of the evolution of microorganisms have
provided a wealth of information, but knowledge regarding “what happened” has precluded …

Microbiome research has increased dramatically in recent years, driven by advances in
technology and significant reductions in the cost of analysis. Such research has unlocked a …

Functional diversity is increasingly recognized by microbial ecologists as the essential link
between biodiversity patterns and ecosystem functioning, determining the trophic …

A community-based sessile life style is the normal mode of growth and survival for many
bacterial species. Under such conditions, cell-to-cell interactions are inevitable and …

Background & Aims The cause of Crohn's disease (CD) is unknown, but the current
hypothesis is that microbial or environmental factors induce gut inflammation in genetically …

That holobionts (microbial communities and their animal or plant hosts) are units of selection
squares poorly with the observation that microbes are often recruited (horizontally acquired) …

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disorder with multifactorial etiology; both
genetic and environmental factors are known to be involved in pathogenesis. Treatment with …

Predictive biology is the next great chapter in synthetic and systems biology, particularly for
microorganisms. Tasks that once seemed infeasible are increasingly being realized such as …