Advances in Microbial Adaptation and Evolution
A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Microbiology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 832
Special Issue Editors
Interests: microbial adaptation; bacterial resistance to antibiotics
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Microorganisms inhabit dynamic and often hostile environments, and their ability to rapidly adapt is central to their ecological success, pathogenicity, and persistence under stress. Adaptation operates across multiple biological scales—from molecular sensing and regulatory rewiring to physiological trade-offs and evolutionary innovation—and is shaped by both environmental pressures and genetic constraints. Understanding these adaptive trajectories is critical for predicting microbial behavior in clinical, industrial, and natural ecosystems.
This Special Issue highlights current advances in microbial adaptation by integrating mechanistic, ecological, and evolutionary perspectives. We welcome studies that probe how selective pressures shape genetic and regulatory architectures; how stress responses transition into heritable evolutionary change; and how pleiotropy, epistasis, and environmental complexity drive or constrain adaptive outcomes. Key questions include: When is adaptation predictable versus contingent? How do regulatory networks facilitate evolvability? What costs accompany adaptive gains? And how do long-term dynamics differ from short-term acclimation?
We invite submissions that explore microbial adaptation through experimental evolution, genomics, transcriptomics, systems biology, and high-resolution phenotyping. Topics of interest include regulatory adaptation, antimicrobial and metal stress evolution, niche specialization, cross-protection and trade-offs, host-microbe evolutionary dynamics, and adaptation to physicochemical surfaces or microenvironments. Both original research and synthetic perspectives are encouraged, particularly those linking mechanistic insight with evolutionary consequence.
Dr. Misty D. Thomas
Prof. Dr. Joseph L. Graves Jr.
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Microorganisms is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- microbial adaptation
- experimental evolution
- regulatory networks
- two-component systems
- stress response
- pleiotropy
- epistasis
- antimicrobial resistance
- genomic evolution
- phenotype-environment interactions
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