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.

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 ...

Chemolithoautotrophic nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB) gain energy from the oxidation of nitrite to nitrate, which is the second step of nitrification and thus represents a major biogeochemical ...

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 ...