Metagenomics has revealed hundreds of species in almost all microbiota. In a few well-studied cases, microbial communities have been observed to coordinate their metabolic fluxes. In principle, microbes can divide tasks to reap the benefits of specialization, as in human economies. However, the benefits and stability of an economy of microbial specialists are far from obvious. Here, we physical...

Autoinducers are small signaling molecules that mediate intercellular communication in microbial populations and trigger coordinated gene expression via 'quorum sensing'. Elucidating the mechanisms that control autoinducer production is, thus, pertinent to understanding collective microbial behavior, such as virulence and bioluminescence. Recent experiments have shown a heterogeneous promoter a...

Cocoa beans fermentation is an important step in the post-harvest processing of cocoa beans. This complex mix culture fermentation produces metabolic products that serve as the precursors for the flavor development process. Modification in the dynamics of microbial population during the fermentation may alter the overall microbial activity and thus may impact the fermentation process. Addition ...

The ever increasing pile-up of electronic waste in dumping sites, especially in developing countries such as China, Pakistan, India and several African countries, might have caused a significant alteration in the microbial community of the contaminated sites. This change in the microbial population may have significant impact to the soil ecology function. The major pollutants of electronic wast...

Microbial communities abound with examples of complex social interactions that shape microbial ecosystems. One particularly striking example is microbial cooperation via the secretion of public goods. It has been suggested by theory, and recently demonstrated experimentally, that microbial population dynamics and the evolutionary dynamics of cooperative social genes take place with similar time...

Many mammals are herbivores, and most herbivorous mammals live on a diet that makes cellulose digestion essential. The ruminants, which include some of our most important domestic meatand milk-producing animals cattle, sheep and goats have a specialized digestive tract which is highly adapted and has evolved to digest highly fibrous plant materials which nonruminants are unable to utilize. In r...

In the lung, alternatively activated macrophages (AAM) form the first line of defense against microbial infection. Due to the noninflammatory nature of AAM, the lung can be considered as an immunosuppressive organ for respiratory pathogens. However, as infection progresses in the lung, another population of macrophages, known as classically activated macrophages (CAM) enters. CAM are far more e...