Environmental transmission is atypical of symbionts that have undergone genome degradation, yet genetically reduced deep-sea anglerfish symbionts likely persist in the deep sea biome in search of a new host.

Red algae have adapted to extreme environments by acquiring genes from bacteria and archaea.

Horizon scanning has been used to identify opportunities and risks presented by 20 emerging issues in the field of biological engineering.

Plasmodium parasite transcription shifts dramatically along asexual development, and transmission stages variably express important immune evasion genes, suggesting much interesting biology has until now been hidden by bulk analyses.

The first genomic view of beetle luciferase evolution indicates evolutionary independence of luciferase between fireflies and click-beetles, and provide valuable datasets which will accelerate the discovery of new biotechnological tools.

The endosymbiosis between an alga and the spotted salamander shows several parallels to invertebrate-algal symbioses as well as to pathogen associations in vertebrate animals.

Molecular details of how the iron–sulfur cluster cofactor of a bacterial global iron regulatory protein simultaneously senses iron and O₂ are revealed by mass spectrometry and spectroscopy.

Experiments and mathematical modelling show that rare nitrogen fixing symbionts invade a population dominated by non-fixing bacteria across plant generations, above a threshold of a combination of ecological factors.

Both beneficial and pathogenic bacteria can use their sheathed flagella during host colonization as a novel toxin-/signal-delivery mechanism.

The enzyme that allows some mites and insects to detoxify the hydrogen cyanide produced by plants has been identified.