title: Microbial diversity--exploration of natural ecosystems and microbiomes.
abstract: Microorganisms are the pillars of life on Earth. Over billions of years, they have evolved into every conceivable niche on the planet. Microbes reshaped the oceans and atmosphere and gave rise to conditions conducive to multicellular organisms. Only in the past decade have we started to peer deeply into the microbial cosmos, and what we have found is amazing. Microbial ecosystems behave, in many ways, like large-scale ecosystems, although there are important exceptions. We review recent advances in our understanding of how microbial diversity is distributed across environments, how microbes influence the ecosystems in which they live, and how these nano-machines might be harnessed to advance our understanding of the natural world.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA; Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Electronic address: sgibbons@mit.edu.
authors.forename: Sean M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Gibbons
authors.affiliation: Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA; Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Department of Surgery, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Marine Biological Laboratory, 7 MBL Street, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA; College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China. Electronic address: gilbert@mcs.anl.gov.
authors.forename: Jack A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gilbert
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D044822:Biodiversity; D004777:Environment; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics*; D064307:Microbiota / Q000235:genetics*