ArticleNature microbiology2026
Mobile genetic elements shape microbial diversity and functions in thawing permafrost soils.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mobile Genetic Elements as Key Drivers of Bacterial Evolution and Adaptation in Agroecosystems.Microbial ecology · 2026Review
- Sub-daily virus sampling at the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series reveals diel and depth-structured population dynamics without community-level shifts.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Diversity and ecological roles of hidden viral players in groundwater microbiomes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Benchmarking with synthetic communities provides a baseline for virus-host inferences from Hi-C proximity linking.PLoS biology · 2025Article
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23 authors.
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Abstract
Ecosystems are shaped by communities of microorganisms whose niches and impacts depend on functional profiles influenced by gene gains and losses. Culture-based experiments demonstrate that mobile genetic elements (MGEs) can mediate gene flux, but quantitative understanding of these dynamics in natural systems remains limited. Here we develop and apply a systematic, meta-omic framework to investigate MGEs in a complex natural system using an 8-year soil time series collected at Stordalen Mire, in Sweden's thawing permafrost margin. In this climate-critical peatland, we identify ~2.1 million MGE recombinases across 89 microbial phyla and assess ecological distributions, affected functions, past mobility and current activity. This revealed an active mobilome that shapes natural genetic diversity via differential impacts on major phyla and affects a wide range of functions, including metabolic genes involved in carbon flux and nutrient cycling. These findings and this analytic framework suggest avenues towards a better understanding of MGE diversity, activity, mobility and impacts across ecosystems.
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