All Taxonomy, Phylogeny, Function articles
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NewsNew biobank decodes survival secrets of extreme acid mine drainage microbes
Over 97 percent of microorganisms in acid mine drainage have never been cultured, leaving their metabolism and adaptation strategies locked as “microbial dark matter.” Now, a new culturomics‑driven resource called the Microbial Biobank of AMD (mbAMD) changes that.
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NewsScientists just found 4 new species of underwater ‘living pink rocks’ that help to store carbon
Rhodoliths may look like small rocks on the seafloor, but they’re actually living algae that create habitats for marine life and contribute to long-term carbon storage. The deeper ‘low-light’ waters off Japan’s Tanegashima Island harbor a surprisingly distinct and diverse community, including four species completely new to science.
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NewsWhat dental calculus can tell us about the oral microbiomes of ancient Japan
Microbe DNA from ancient dental calculus offers insights into the past oral microbiomes of the Japanese people, including the phylogeny of the periodontal disease-associated archaeon, Methanobrevibacter oralis.
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NewsResearcher discovers single-celled organism that transforms into cannibalistic supergiant
Researchers have discovered a microscopic organism that can transform into a cannibalistic ’supergiant’ that drastically changes size, shape, and behavior, and abandons filter-feeding to hunt and consume their genetically identical relatives.
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NewsRevealing the invisible: a new baseline for Salish sea diatoms answers a global call
Diatoms are powerful in driving roughly 20% of global photosynthesis and forming the very base of marine food webs. Scientists have published a new checklist of 924 diatom taxa alongside a curated dataset of 11,469 records, providing a long-needed foundation for environmental monitoring across the Salish Sea bioregion.
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NewsMicroscopic coils and coffee trees lead to an amazing new fungal discovery
A new study has revealed two novel species of Neohelicomyces fungi: Neohelicomyces coffeae and Neohelicomyces puerensis. While studying the fungi that live on Coffea arabica, researchers spotted these unique organisms growing on dead coffee branches.
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NewsSingle-cell sequencing reveals unexpected protist diversity
Scientists developing a single-cell sequencing pipeline have revealed previously unknown diversity from a group of free-living protists closely related to the parasites that cause sleeping sickness.
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NewsRecent pandemic viruses jumped to humans without prior adaptation, study finds
A large-scale evolutionary analysis shows most zoonotic viruses emerge without prior adaptation, while passing through a laboratory leaves detectable genetic signatures, offering a new tool to interpret outbreak origins.
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NewsA common CRISPR platform enables comparative studies of multicellularity in social amoebae
Researchers have established a CRISPR genome editing technique that enables comparative analysis of the evolution of multicellularity across different species of social amoebas (cellular slime molds). Until now, genetic studies had been largely restricted to a single model species.
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NewsMpox: recombinant virus with genomic elements of clades Ib and IIb
Recombination of monkeypox virus (MPXV) strains has been documented in recent months, with two cases of a recombinant strain comprising clade Ib and IIb MPXV reported, the World Health Organization says.
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NewsNew algorithm enhances microbiome biomarker discovery by integrating biological relationships
Researchers have developed a novel algorithm, Microbiome Elastic Feature Extraction (MEFE), that significantly improves the identification of microbiome biomarkers by incorporating phylogenetic, taxonomic, and functional relationships among microbes.
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NewsCultivated peanut AhPR10 gene family mediates resistance to Aspergillus flavus
Researchers identified and analyzed PR10 genes in cultivated peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.), and found three genes that demonstrated potential importance in peanut resistance to Aspergillus flavus.
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NewsAncient DNA pushes back record of treponemal disease-causing bacteria by 3,000 years
Scientists have recovered a genome of Treponema pallidum from 5,500-year-old human remains in Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia. The research expands knowledge about the history of this infectious disease and its occurrence in human populations.
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NewsJeremy Horowitz selected for The Oceanography Society Early Career Award
The Oceanography Society (TOS) has selected Dr. Jeremy Horowitz as a recipient of the TOS Early Career Award, recognizing his outstanding early-career research contributions, impact, and promise for continued achievement in oceanography, along with his strong record of mentorship, outreach, and collaborative science.
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NewsSmarter tools for peering into the microscopic world
In a pair of new studies, researchers introduce powerful tools that make it easier, more accurate and more scalable to figure out how microbes are related. One tool improves how scientists build microbial family trees. The other provides a software foundation used worldwide to analyze biological data.
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NewsResearchers confirm new rickettsia species found in dogs
Researchers have confirmed that a species of Rickettsia first seen in dogs in 2018 is a new species of bacteria. The new species is associated with symptoms similar to those of Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF) in dogs, but has not yet been found in humans.
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NewsGroundbreaking technique unlocks secrets of bacterial shape-shifting
Scientists have long known that bacteria come in many shapes and sizes, but understanding what those differences mean has remained a major challenge, especially for species that can’t be grown in the lab. A groundbreaking method could change how researchers study bacterial diversity.
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NewsClues to origins of complex life revealed with discovery of new unicellular organism and phylum
A new paper describes the discovery of Solarion arienae, a previously unknown unicellular organism that provides new insight into the earliest stages of complex life on Earth. This microscopic protist displays two distinct cell types and a unique predatory structure unlike any seen before.
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NewsScientists uncover global patterns and drivers of orchid mycorrhizal interactions
A global meta-analysis of orchid-fungal associations leads to a general conclusion: an orchid’s fungal community is driven more strongly by its ecophysiology and biogeography than by its phylogeny.
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NewsNovel fungal phyla and classes revealed by eDNA long reads
Via a thorough analysis of the EUKARYOME long-read database, an international team has discovered that a large proportion of unknown eukaryotes uncovered with long-read sequencing belong to deep, hitherto undescribed fungal lineages.