Decomposers are crucial for keeping Earth habitable through nutrient recycling. Most decomposers survive through osmotrophy — a means of feeding by absorbing dissolved nutrients rather than engulfing prey. But how this method of feeding repeatedly arose across the eukaryotic tree of life remains unclear. Now, researchers have discovered that four groups of eukaryotes which have specialized in osmotrophy first arose between 720 million and 1 billion years ago and that they share a toolkit of genes involved in osmotrophic functions. Their results also indicate that horizontal gene transfer played an important role in the evolution of these functions.

When we think of the immune system, most people imagine white blood cells putting up a fight against invading germs within our bloodstream. But now, in research publishing June 4^th in the Cell Press journal Molecular Cell, scientists detail a separate but equally important route by which our bodies fight infection—directly inside already infected cells. In the report, the authors define a previously undescribed method of germ resistance they coin “antibody-directed xenophagy” (ADX), where cells can digest bacteria and viruses that cross the cell membrane, including Salmonella and adenoviruses.