Environmental Sensing and Cell-Cell Communication

The last two decades have provided a wealth of new insight into how microbes (both prokaryotes and eukaryotes) sense and respond to their surroundings and to one another. Technological advances continue to shape our understanding of this burgeoning field, and this has led to a sea-change in the way in which we view the microbial world. No longer are microbes viewed as being the archetypal single celled entities; instead, community spirit and coordinated responses are the order of the day. In this special anniversary collection for Microbiology, timed to coincide with the Microbiology Society-sponsored Cell-Cell Communication meeting, Guest Editors Martin Welch (University of Cambridge) and Anugraha Mathew (University of Zurich) aim to assemble a landmark collection of papers that celebrate the interaction of microbes with their environment and with one another.

Submissions are particularly welcomed on microbial sensing and signaling pathways, quorum sensing (including both intra- and inter-species interactions and other forms of community-wide behaviors), chemoreception, secondary metabolism, and the complex interplay between different sensory pathways.