About this Research Topic

Background

Bacteria can interact with the environment and with almost all living organisms, establishing symbiotic relationships with viruses, algae, fungi, plants, and animals while forming relatively organized communities in the shape of biofilms. Viruses also play a role in animal and bacterial fitness, as well as in multiple level (viruses-bacteria-host) interactions, thus contributing to overall species evolution.

These interactive behaviors, maintained by a network of “intelligent” and circular molecular signals, render microbes precious paradigms for studying complexity with a holistic approach and provide a comprehensive perspective for systems microbiology. Firstly, the interactive microbial-based ecosystems are examples of cooperative and successful inter-kingdom exchanges supporting community well-being and stability. Furthermore, microorganisms are good models to explore adaptation to changing environmental conditions (i.e. global climate change). Their fitness is due to the extraordinary plasticity of their genotypes and phenotypes that allow transforming a negative event into an opportunity of evolution.

Finally, bacteria, by using all the devices necessary for economizing energy and building blocks, recycling metabolites and delocalize proteins for performing multiple functions are the best paradigms of sustainability. Shedding light on these aspects, often so obvious to be forgotten, is of primary importance for humans to cope with the present environmental challenges. Actually, we have much to learn from bacteria to respond to urgent questions concerning the set-up of strategic behaviors to contain climate changes and scarcity of resources.

This Research Topic focuses on exploring successful examples of bacterial and viral cooperative interactions with other microbes (fungi, algae), animals (including humans) and plants, and on reconstructing this efficient network of interactions thanks to the employment of the recent advances in omics techniques and bioinformatics.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Human retroviruses and host as an example of cooperative evolution
- Sustainability of microbial ecosystems in a changing environment
- Bacterial strategies for shaping successful reciprocal and inter-kingdom relationships
How soil bacteria built-up our world and water bacteria can cope with climate change
- Gut bacteria and the human nervous system co-evolution
- Lichens as models of adaptation to climate change
- Discovering of interactions in environmental microbial communities by metaproteomics

Article types welcomed:
Reviews, Mini-Reviews, Original Research, Hypothesis and Theory

Keywords: Microbial-Host Co-Evolution, Metaproteomic Networks, Low-Cost Living Strategies, Interkingdom Interactions, Ecosystem Disruption

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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