Rising dust pollution across Europe in a changing climate - Nature

A database of daily dust metals in Europe is established and a machine learning model shows that transported dust intrusion events over the past decade are linked to changes in atmospheric circulation, while an ice core shows that the increase in dust since pre-industrial times is governed by increasing aridity in North Africa..

go.nature.com

Martha Lillard, last known US polio survivor using iron lung, dies aged 78

Lillard, of Oklahoma, contracted polio when she was five and slept inside cylindrical metal device to help her breathe

theguardian.com

High-quality phage assembly from metagenomes with PALACE - Nature Biotechnology

PALACE combines homology features and deep learning to improve phage assembly from metagenomics.

nature.com

Investigating the mobility and host range of mobile genetic elements harbouring antimicrobial resistance genes in enterococci

In this study, the abundance and conjugation capacity of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) carrying resistance genes such as vanA, tet(M) and erm(B) were investigated to enhance our understanding of anti...

microbiologyresearch.org

K. Lisa Yang Wildlife Health Fellows Program | Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health

Training the next generation of wildlife conservation and One Health leaders

wildlife.cornell.edu

How proteins fold

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Published online: 02 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41580-026-00993-xDespite advances in protein structure prediction, how proteins fold remains unclear. Understanding protein (mis)folding will require single-molecule techniques and advanced computation tools.

dlvr.it

home | GlobDB

globdb.org

Troubleshooting common errors in assemblies of long-read metagenomes - Nature Biotechnology

Long-read sequence assemblies from metagenomes contain frequent errors.

go.nature.com

Troubleshooting common errors in assemblies of long-read metagenomes - Nature Biotechnology

Long-read sequence assemblies from metagenomes contain frequent errors.

nature.com

Troubleshooting common errors in assemblies of long-read metagenomes - Nature Biotechnology

Long-read sequence assemblies from metagenomes contain frequent errors.

go.nature.com

Deep learning-guided discovery and engineering of binding peptides for accelerated enzymatic degradation of polyethylene terephthalate

We developed a deep learning pipeline for the rapid discovery of peptides with high affinity for polyethylene terephthalate. Fusing these peptides to a polyethylene terephthalate hydrolase substantially enhanced enzymatic degradation efficiency. This deep learning-guided strategy offers a powerful approach for engineering enhanced biocatalysts to mitigate plastic waste.

dlvr.it

Interspecies competition promotes antibiotic resistance with diminishing returns

Evolutionary outcomes are affected by multiple complex factors, many of which are omitted from traditional experimental designs. In their recent manuscript, Muzafar et al. demonstrate that interspecies competition drives increased physiological streptomycin resistance in Salmonella enterica through upregulation of the stringent stress response, altering evolutionary trajectories between monoculture and coculture.

dlvr.it

Breathing both ways: simultaneous aerobic–anaerobic respiration in microbes

Microorganisms have historically been classified as obligate aerobes or anaerobes, facultative anaerobes, or microaerophiles, reflecting differences in respiratory strategies dictated by the use of oxygen and alternative electron acceptors. Recent discoveries provide evidence that a deviant strategy, the concurrent reduction of oxygen and other electron acceptors, is more widespread than previously thought. Such co-respiring bacteria employ hybrid metabolic strategies that extend models of electron acceptor use. In this review, we investigate mechanisms of co-respiration, summarize the biochemical components enabling parallel electron flow, and discuss the regulation of aerobic and anaerobic pathways under changing redox conditions. We also examine the evolutionary context of these strategies during the rise of oxygen on early Earth and outline experimental approaches needed to resolve co-respiration in individual cells.

dlvr.it

The impact of artificial sweeteners on bacterial physiology and the microbiome

Artificial sweeteners are non-nutritive compounds that have a profound sweetening effect with a negligible to zero calorific contribution. Global initiatives to reduce sugar consumption to tackle health conditions such as obesity have led to a significant increase in their consumption in recent decades. Artificial sweeteners have undergone extensive testing to determine whether their consumption could impact human health; however, their impact on the microbiome and microbial physiology has been comparatively overlooked. Recent work has demonstrated that artificial sweeteners (e.g., Ace-K, saccharin, and aspartame) can influence the oral and gut microbiome and that they can significantly affect bacterial behavior and growth. In this review, we will contextualize these findings and explore their relevance to human artificial sweetener consumption.

dlvr.it

When soils learn to suppress nematodes

An evaluation of banana plantations, sown between 1 and 10 years ago, suggested that over time soils can become suppressive to root-knot nematodes. Lu et al. linked this transition to shifts in rhizosphere microbiomes, enrichment of free-living nematodes, and the emergence of a keystone Bacillus taxon, highlighting cross-kingdom interactions.

dlvr.it

Cognition without brains? Learning and memory in microorganisms

Memory and learning are cognitive abilities typically associated with animals that possess a complex nervous system. Interestingly, recent studies suggest that microorganisms might also display learning-like behaviours. However, a factor limiting progress in this field is the lack of shared, microbe-specific frameworks that allow microbiologists to easily compare discoveries with concepts developed in cognitive sciences. In this review, we aim to bridge this gap by providing a conceptual overview of the definitional requirements for memory and learning to classify microbial behaviours and capabilities. Additionally, we identify and address problems that cause conceptual ambiguity in the microbial cognition literature, thereby facilitating more productive debates on the topic. Finally, we provide a novel perspective on how microbes might ‘learn’ from each other.

dlvr.it

Managing microbial interactions in environmental biotechnology: can we scale interaction principles?

Microbial interactions hold vast potential for improving sustainability, including waste upcycling, greenhouse gas mitigation, contaminant bioremediation, and host performance. However, attempts to manage interactions in complex, open microbial communities often fall short of expectations, in part because interactions are highly context-dependent, with net effects arising from multiple component interactions, higher-order interactions, and rapid evolution—features largely revealed from studies with simplified communities. Here, we propose how these insights can be translated to complex communities by prioritizing the scales and disturbances that matter, leveraging the ecological context that constrains interactions, targeting function-critical behaviors and traits, and accounting for eco-evolutionary feedbacks. We further propose coupling top-down, trait-based, and coarse-grained approaches with bottom-up synthetic ecology approaches to diagnose failures and design robust microbial processes.

dlvr.it

‘Not a free-for-all’: Indigenous communities want limits on how their data are shared

Push for “data sovereignty” could reshape how scientists share information

scim.ag