Scientists have discovered flagella in an unexpected place: hot spring-dwelling bacteria from the phylum Chloroflexota. Research shows that flagella were lost in other forms of Chloroflexota that adapted to marine environments hundreds of millions of years ago. [Read More]
Recently, researchers used population genomics to find that while archaeal hitchhikers may often act as parasites, in other cases, they likely help their hosts. [Read More]
Building on existing virus-host prediction approaches, researchers have created a new program called iPHoP. It combines and evaluates multiple predictions to reliably match viruses with their archaea and bacteria hosts. [Read More]
Microbial communities around hydrothermal vents survive in very hot, high-pressure and chemically-rich ecosystems. They hold clues for understanding how life thrives in extreme environments. [Read More]
Boggy peatlands, which hold much of the Earth’s carbon as well as material that can be converted to energy, are made up heavily of sphagnum mosses. [Read More]
A new study offers the first irrefutable proof that anaerobic fungi — the kind living in the stomachs of livestock — can deconstruct lignin in the absence of oxygen. [Read More]