Like physical systems that exhibit nucleation phenomena, an invading population of a strong microbial antagonist requires a critical inoculum size to successfully invade a population of a weaker microbial antagonist.
Grant Kinsler, Kerry Geiler-Samerotte, Dmitri A Petrov
A set of adaptive mutations affect only a small number of phenotypes that matter in the evolution condition, and yet contain substantial latent functional diversity revealed in distant environments.
Multicellular and socially aggregating prokaryotes contain previously undescribed, chaperone-based systems predicted to mediate defensive biological conflicts, several components of which are thematically similar antecedents of eukaryotic apoptosis pathways.
Vayu Maini Rekdal, Paola Nol Bernadino ... Emily P Balskus
A previously unrecognized group of metalloenzymes enables human gut microbes to metabolize dietary molecules and neurotransmitters and likely mediates interactions and metabolism among environmental microorganisms.
