Past and present anthropogenic mercury (Hg) release to ecosystems causes neurotoxicity and cardiovascular disease in humans with an estimated economic cost of $117 billion USD annually. Humans are primarily exposed to Hg via the consumption of contaminated freshwater and marine fish. The UNEP Minamata Convention on Hg aims to curb Hg release to the environment and is accompanied by global Hg monitoring efforts to track its suc...

Summary Methylmercury is a potent neurotoxin that biomagnifies through food webs and which production depends on anaerobic microbial uptake of inorganic mercury (Hg) species. One outstanding knowledge gap in understanding Hg methylation is the nature of bioavailable Hg species. It has become increasingly obvious that Hg bioavailability is spatially diverse and temporally dynamic but current models are mostly built on single th...

The Arctic is currently warming at an unprecedented rate, which may affect environmental constraints on the freshwater microbial communities found there. Yet, our knowledge of the community structure and functional potential of High Arctic freshwater microbes remains poor, even though they play key roles in nutrient cycling and other ecosystem services. Here, using high‐throughput metagenomic sequencing and genome assembly, we...