eLife is pleased to present a Special Issue to highlight recent advances in the mechanistic understanding of microbiome function.

Activated Drosophila macrophages undergo transient metabolic remodeling towards Hypoxia inducible factor 1 α-driven aerobic glycolysis, a program that induces systemic metabolic changes and is crucial for resistance to infection.

Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy, paired with fluorescent, voltage-sensitive dyes, provides a method for measuring and quantifying membrane potentials of living cells.

Assays using recombinant HIF prolyl hydroxylases did not support hydroxylation of more than 20 reported non-HIF substrates under conditions where robust HIF hydroxylation was observed.

Forward genetic screens define a novel genetic landscape by which diverse, unrelated autism risk genes may converge to commonly affect the robustness of synaptic transmission.

Genetic and molecular analyses reveal the decisive role of fatty acid oxidation (FAO) acting downstream to the ROS-JNK circuit essential for hemocyte progenitor differentiation in Drosophila..

The Bi-Genomic Mitochondrial-Split-GFP, where both fragments of the Split-GFP are expressed by separated translation machineries, shuts off cytosolic fluorescence of dual-localized proteins, allowing visualization of their mitochondrial echoforms.

Alternative splicing of a single gene generates functional diversity amongst chromatin regulators.

Extensive molecular profiling shows how loss of highly similar, paralogous ribosomal proteins lead to distinct phenotypic outputs, through translational control of specific mRNAs.

Functional definition of NrtR and the discovery of its acetylation represents a first paradigm for linking protein acetylation to bacterial central NAD⁺ metabolism.