Climate debates often frame individual behaviour and systems change as distinct pathways to action. We suggest that social change arises from individuals’ agency within their roles in societal systems, and that this agency should be actively leveraged to achieve meaningful climate change mitigation.

Insect-associated microbiomes, as co-evolved members of the holobiont, play pivotal roles in host physiology, ecological resilience, and evolutionary innovation. This review synthesizes recent advances in understanding microbial symbionts' contributions to metabolic adaptation, insecticide detoxification, and immune modulation. Framed within hologenome theory—which posits host-microbe assemblages as units of natural selection—we explore co-evolutionary dynamics driving mutualistic specialization and adaptive plasticity. Cutting-edge tools like genome editing and metagenomics reveal how gut microbiota mediate cross-kingdom interactions, insecticide resistance, and reproductive fitness. Intriguingly, microbial symbionts can enhance host resistance through detoxification while sensitizing hosts to specific toxins, highlighting context-dependent trade-offs. Targeted manipulation of microbial consortia—via detoxification disruption or symbiont engineering—offers new avenues for sustainable pest control, though ecological risks demand rigorous biosafety protocols. A paradigm shift toward holobiont-centered models promises unified strategies for sustainable agriculture and biodiversity conservation in the Anthropocene.

Plant responses to heat stress emerge from interactions among host genotype, environment, and the rhizosphere microbiome, yet most studies examine these components in isolation. We applied the Genotype × Environment × Rhizosphere Microbiomes (GERMs) framework to test how host–microbe coordination contributes to heat tolerance in cereal crops Zea mays and Sorghum bicolor. We analyzed maize and sorghum grown under optimal and heat-stressed conditions across contrasting soil treatments using integrated plant–microbial metatranscriptomics. Host and microbial gene expression profiles were jointly analyzed alongside microbiome composition and plant phenotypes and compared with amplicon-based profiling. Metatranscriptomics captured microbial community structure comparable to amplicon sequencing while providing enhanced functional and taxonomic resolution. Host genotype and temperature jointly shaped microbial functional profiles. Conserved plant orthologs across maize and sorghum were linked to microbial pathways, specifically microbial d-amino acid metabolism was associated with plant heat tolerance. These findings indicate the rhizosphere microbiome actively participates in plant heat stress responses through coordinated transcriptional interactions with the host. Integrating host and microbial transcriptomes reveals mechanistic insights into plant adaptation and establishes a framework for dissecting plant–microbiome interactions under environmental stress.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play crucial roles in gene regulation, but their full-length isoforms are often missed because of the limitations of poly(A)-based enrichment and short-read sequencing. Here, we aim to establish a comprehensive transcriptome profiling that captures both poly(A)+ and poly(A)- RNA isoforms using Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) R10.4.1 flowcells. We establish an rRNA-depleted full-length transcriptome sequencing workflow (NanoncRNA-Seq), and use it together with Illumina NovaSeq to profile lncRNA isoforms in Saccharomyces cerevisiae under glucose and ethanol-associated physiological states. We combine multiple analytical tools to evaluate expression levels, splicing patterns, variants, and lncRNA identification. ONT sequencing achieves high accuracy (Q-score: 22.35, 99.42%) and detects fewer SNP and more novel isoforms, while Illumina sequencing reports fewer INDELs. Expression profiles are highly consistent within each platform and moderately across platforms. Notably, NanoncRNA-seq enables isoform-resolved lncRNA discovery and recoveres substantially more lncRNAs than Illumina (Pinfish: n = 260; Illumina: n = 51), including more lincRNAs (n = 201 vs. n = 25), likely because low-abundance transcripts are difficult to reconstruct from short reads. Overall, NanoncRNA-Seq effectively captures full-length lncRNA isoform discovery and highlights the complementary strengths of ONT in transcriptome research. This work describes NanoncRNA-Seq, an rRNA-depleted ONT workflow capturing full length poly(A)+/poly(A)- lncRNA isoforms in yeast.

The type II topoisomerases, gyrase and topoisomerase IV, are ubiquitous enzymes in bacteria that help regulate DNA topology and are the molecular targets of fluoroquinolone antibacterials. As part of their catalytic mechanism, these enzymes transiently cleave DNA in a sequence-dependent manner. Determining the extent to which various factors influence the sequence-dependent cleavage of these enzymes, particularly across bacterial species, could help reveal important insights into their physiological functions and guide the development of new, more effective antibacterials. Here, we used our recently developed SHAN-seq method to map and compare the DNA cleavage site preferences of gyrases and topoisomerase IVs from three different pathogenic bacterial species, E. coli, Bacillus anthracis, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, in the presence of the fluoroquinolone, ciprofloxacin. We found that the enzymes’ cleavage specificities vary across bacterial species, with DNA supercoil chirality, and in response to ciprofloxacin. Our findings suggest that subtle variations in the enzymes’ catalytic core and C-terminal domains alter their cleavage site preferences, which could, in turn, influence their physiological activities and susceptibility to fluoroquinolone antibacterials.