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 ...

Human-caused increases in gaseous nitrogen (N) emissions to the atmosphere have accelerated terrestrial ecosystem N deposition over the past half-century. As forest productivity is usually N limited, ...

The authors have discovered that nitrite-oxidizing organisms can convert cyanate (an oxidation product of cyanide and a decomposition product of urea) into ammonium (the protonated form of ammonia) ...

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 ...