Water microbiology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Our findings suggest that Haematococcus lacustris adopts both r and K strategies, enhancing the understanding of the adaptation and survival of microbial populations in challenging environments.

Microplastics intensify quorum-sensing-mediated gene exchange in wastewater treatment plants, enabling their reconceptualization as quorum-modulating microscopes that reprogram microbial communication and function, based on their interplay with biofilms and quorum sensing within wastewater systems

Metabolically unique glacial microbes dominate foreland communities but rarely persist in fjords, showing limited functional transfer across the land-sea interface, based on genome-resolved metagenomics along a glacier-to-fjord gradient

Bacteriophages are the most abundant life form on earth and can be applied to eliminate or engineer bacteria. Here, authors demonstrate RNA barcoding as a high throughput tool to measure bacteriophage host range in natural microbial communities and inform bacteriophage ecology and applications.

A 2-year metagenomic study of wastewater across 19 sites from 4 Indian metros reveals city-specific microbial diversity yet homogenous resistomes. Authors notes differential association of antibiotic-resistance genes with mobile genetic elements.

Arctic sea-ice ridges support distinct microbial and algal communities and hold up to 80% of summer ice algal biomass, transitioning from winter repositories to summer hotspots, based on seasonal surveys of ridge habitats and biomass.

Microbial consortia underpin biological wastewater treatment, but controlling cooperative metabolism remains challenging. Mesoscale confinement modulates porin transport and metabolite enrichment, boosting pollutant removal and resource recovery.

This Genome Watch discusses the great biosynthetic capacity that has been identified in marine environmental and host-associated microbiomes, along with approaches to facilitate research into these diverse and resource-rich microbial communities.

Ethiopian salt lakes feature unique microbial communities with nesting layers of symbioses, where haloarchaea and their ultra-small archaeal symbionts are prey to viruses, which are in turn hijacked by virus satellites.

Our research shows that the addition of nitrate quickly upcycles sewage sludge, which is rich in ammonium, organic matter and sulfur compounds, into anaerobic ammonium oxidation seeds — inocula that contain anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria — that can be used to initiate or enrich ammonium oxidation processes in wastewater treatment.

Three different studies in this issue use metagenomics to study the bacterial and viral dynamics of freshwater microbiomes, highlighting the ecological and environmental drivers of these ecosystems.