Bacterial chemotaxis enables cells to move in gradients of environmental signals that are sensed by chemoreceptors. A major limitation in the field consists currently in the lacking information on the signal(s) or chemoeffectors recognized by the majority of chemoreceptors, which in turn hampers understanding of how the environment has shaped chemotactic capabilities. A number of different approaches for signal identification...

Human activity and climate change affect biodiversity and cause species range shifts, contractions, and expansions. Globally, human activities and climate change have emerged as persistent threats to biodiversity, leading to approximately 68% of the ~522 primate species being threatened with extinction. Here, we used habitat suitability models and integrated data on human population density, gross domestic product (GDP), road...

Summary Microbial sulfate reduction is largely associated with anaerobic methane oxidation and alkane degradation in sulfate–methane transition zone (SMTZ) of deep‐sea cold seeps. How the sulfur cycling is mediated by microbes near SMTZ has not been fully understood. In this study, we detected a shallow SMTZ in three of eight sediment cores sampled from two cold seep areas in the South China Sea. One hundred ten genomes repres...

Aim The Sino‐Japanese Floristic Region has extremely high species diversity with respect to temperate plants; however, the reasons for this diversity are poorly understood because most studies have only considered geographic isolation caused by climatic oscillations. In some plant groups, high floral trait diversity and uneven species diversity between insular systems and the continental area suggest other factors may have imp...

Aquaculture is a fast‐growing and rapidly expanding industry in the world. Probiotics are widely used in aquaculture and have provided benefits to aquatic animal health, and it is also a promising alternative to antibiotics for control of fish diseases. With the development of biotechnology, new expression systems and novel techniques for the surface display of heterologous proteins in surface of probiotics cells have been dev...

Summary Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common disease worldwide that is strongly associated with the gut microbiota. However, little is known regarding the gut microbiota after surgical treatment. 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to evaluate differences in gut microbiota among colorectal adenoma patients, CRC patients, CRC postoperative patients and healthy controls by comparing gut microbiota diversity, overall composition and...

Unprecedented levels of nitrogen (N) have been deposited in ecosystems over the past century, which is expected to have cascading effects on microbially mediated soil respiration ( SR ). Extracellular enzymes play critical roles on the degradation of soil organic matter, and measurements of their activities are potentially useful indicators of SR . The links between soil extracellular enzymatic activities ( EEA s) and SR under...

Summary The bacterial phytopathogen X anthomonas campestris pv. campestris ( Xcc ) relies on the hrp (hypersensitive response and pathogenicity) genes to cause disease and induce hypersensitive response ( HR ). The hrp genes of bacterial phytopathogens are divided into two groups. Xcc hrp genes belong to group II . It has long been known that the group II hrp genes are activated by an AraC ‐type transcriptional regulator whose...

Understanding the dynamics and underlying mechanism of carbon exchange between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere is one of the key issues in global change research. In this study, we quantified the carbon fluxes in different terrestrial ecosystems in China, and analyzed their spatial variation and environmental drivers based on the long‐term observation data of China FLUX sites and the published data from other flux si...

Net ecosystem productivity (NEP) was continuously measured using the eddy covariance (EC) technique from 2003 to 2005 at three forest sites of ChinaFLUX. The forests include Changbaishan temperate mixed forest (CBS), Qianyanzhou subtropical coniferous plantation (QYZ), and Dinghushan subtropical evergreen broad‐leaved forest (DHS). They span wide ranges of temperature and precipitation and are influenced by the eastern Asian m...