09/24/2026
Collection
Check out a new Collection across several PLOS journals in partnership with the Gates Foundation, including a range of interdisciplinary research on the topic of Wastewater & Environmental Surveillance (WES) in Low-Resource Settings.
Image credit: Supriya Kumar
Current Issue August 2026
09/02/2026
research article
Cryptic species complexes pose fundamental challenges to biologists, as species exhibit minimal morphological differences that require integrating morphology, genetics, and biogeography for identification. The authors present a deep learning approach to support species identification in the freshwater snail genus Radomaniola, a morphologically cryptic group from the Balkans.
Image credit: Vetter et al
08/24/2026
research article
Skeletal muscle naturally adapts its size and strength in response to physical activity, a process that is essential for both athletic training and rehabilitation. However, predicting how a specific training routine will alter a muscle’s shape remains difficult. This is because muscle growth relies on a complex, multiscale chain of events, where physical forces from movements trigger chemical signals that slowly rebuild the tissue over time.
Image credit: Devold et al
08/12/2026
education
The degraded nature of ancient DNA means that the standard techniques of genome assembly developed for modern DNA are unlikely to perform effectively, unless heavily modified. This hinders the incorporation of ancient data into broader metagenomic studies that would otherwise benefit from having deep time information on the evolution of different microbial species.
Image credit: Jose G. Ortega Castro
07/10/2026
research article
Interspecies interactions are characterized conventionally by the net influence, positive or negative, a species exerts on another. Community ecology theories rely on these net interactions to describe the behaviour of multispecies communities.
Image credit: Guy Grandjean
06/22/2026
software
The authors introduce pyhgf: a Python package backed by JAX and Rust for creating, manipulating, and sampling dynamic networks for predictive coding. They improve over other frameworks by enclosing the network components as transparent, modular, and malleable variables in the message-passing steps. The resulting graphs can implement arbitrary algorithms as belief propagation.
Image credit: Legrand et al
07/09/2026
research Article
Given the amino acid sequence of the original enzyme and a set of residues for which the local environment should be conserved, i.e., the catalytic site, the author's approach generates mutants that differ vastly in the overall sequence while retaining...
Image credit: USGS
07/06/2026
research article
Longitudinal microbiome studies provide critical insights into microbial community dynamics and their relation to host health.
Image credit: Sean Sinclair
06/22/2026
research Article
Understanding the dynamic interaction between the viral life cycle and immune signaling is crucial to designing effective antiviral strategies.
Image credit: Boddepalli et al
06/22/2026
Research Article
Patients with dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been treated with mixtures of bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria. This treatment is highly personalized because the right phages must be selected for each patient’s infection.
Image credit: de Boer, Schooley, and Perelson
Knowledge-guided analysis of "omics" data using the KnowEnG cloud platform
Test accuracy of polymerase chain reaction methods against conventional diagnostic techniques for Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) in patients with clinical or epidemiological suspicion of CL: Systematic review and meta-analysis
Murine and related chapparvoviruses are nephro-tropic and produce novel accessory proteins in infected kidneys
Prevalence and genetic profiles of isoniazid resistance in tuberculosis patients: A multicountry analysis of cross-sectional data
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