Bacteria and other microorganisms are abundant throughout soils and deep into the ground and serve an essential role in the global ecosystem through various biochemical processes, particularly ...

A Caltech-led study published in Nature Microbiology found that drought drives elevated antibiotic resistance across soils worldwide, with drier regions showing consistently higher frequencies of ...

Seasonal rain on California grasslands kicks off a rapid expansion and turnover of viruses in the soil, according to a new study by UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Lab. These viruses may ...

As global agriculture struggles to feed a growing population, soils are under increasing pressure. Heavy fertilizer use has degraded soil quality, disrupted microbial ecosystems, and increased ...

Soil is not simply "dirt." It supplies plants with important nutrients, and is home to billions of organisms that feed plants ...

Though a founding concept of ecology suggests that the physical environment determines where organisms can survive, modern scientists have suspected there is more to the story of how microbial ...

Researchers tracked how plant matter moves through bacteria's metabolism. Microbes respire three times as much carbon dioxide (CO2) from non-sugar carbons from lignin compared to sugar from cellulose.

Soil is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, air, water, and organisms (living and dead) that regularly appear under the fingernails of all gardeners. Soil is a living, diverse, and complex ...

Image of soil with a close-up of a bacterium and the cellular pathways involved in carbon dioxide productions. Available substrates from soil organic matter are processed through specific pathways ...