It could never be found until recently, in a fish tank a few floors below a university microbiology department: one single organism able to perform the complete process of nitrification.

The nitrifying unions known until now involved bacteria or archaea that oxidize ammonia to nitrite, and then different bacteria that oxidize nitrite to nitrate (Fig. 1). It had, however, been ...

On timescales of hundreds to thousands of years, the ocean is the Earth’s largest active reservoir of carbon and is the dominant sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide 15. This is principally a result ...

But different microbes have distinct roles to play, and environmental factors influence activity. Under our feet, in the soil, is a wealth of microbial activity. Just like humans have different ...