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Microorganisms Involved in Methylmercury Demethylation and Mercury Reduction are Widely Distributed and Active in the Bathypelagic Deep Ocean Waters

The ocean’s mercury (Hg) content has tripled due to anthropogenic activities, and although the dark ocean (>200 m) has become an important Hg reservoir, concentrations of the toxic and bioaccumulative methylmercury (MeHg) are low and therefore very difficult to measure. As a consequence, the current understanding of the Hg cycle in the deep ocean is… [Read More]

Horizontal gene transfer of the Mer operon is associated with large effects on the transcriptome and increased tolerance to mercury in nitrogen-fixing bacteria

BackgroundMercury (Hg) is highly toxic and has the potential to cause severe health problems for humans and foraging animals when transported into edible plant parts. Soil rhizobia that form symbiosis with legumes may possess mechanisms to prevent heavy metal translocation from roots to shoots in plants by exporting metals from nodules or compartmentalizing metal ions… [Read More]

Cultivation of novel Atribacterota from oil well provides new insight into their diversity, ecology, and evolution in anoxic, carbon-rich environments

BackgroundThe Atribacterota are widely distributed in the subsurface biosphere. Recently, the first Atribacterota isolate was described and the number of Atribacterota genome sequences retrieved from environmental samples has increased significantly; however, their diversity, physiology, ecology, and evolution remain poorly understood.ResultsWe report the isolation of the second member of Atribacterota, Thermatribacter velox gen. nov., sp. nov.,… [Read More]

Repeated migration, interbreeding and bottlenecking shaped the phylogeography of the selfing grass Brachypodium stacei

Brachypodium stacei is the most ancestral lineage in the genus Brachypodium, a model system for grass functional genomics. B. stacei shows striking and sometimes contradictory biological and evolutionary features, including a high selfing rate yet extensive admixture, an ancient Miocene origin yet with recent evolutionary radiation, and adaptation to different dry climate conditions in its narrow… [Read More]