Excellent reviews across all sections, with many from the Nature Journals. Also, multiple articles on the tree of life and animal experiments.

General microbiome
1,003 reference genomes of bacterial and archaeal isolates expand coverage of the tree of life – Supratim Mukherjee – Nature Biotechnology

Lokiarchaea are close relatives of Euryarchaeota, not bridging the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes – Violette Da Cunha – PLoS Genetics

Review: Natural Products and the Gene Cluster Revolution – Paul R. Jensen – Trends in Microbiology

Pregnancy and early life
Review: How nutrition and the maternal microbiota shape the neonatal immune system – Andrew J. MacPherson – Nature Reviews Immunology

Multi-site human microbiome
Review: Role of oral and gut microbiome in nitric oxide mediated colon motility – Miriam Y. Walker – Nitric Oxide

Human skin microbiome
Review: Chemical signaling in mosquito–host interactions: the role of human skin microbiota – William Takken – Current Opinion in Insect Science

Human oral microbiome
Reduced Susceptibility to Antiseptics Is Conferred by Heterologous Housekeeping Genes – Supathep Tansirichaiya – Microbial Drug Resistance

Human gut microbiome
*Alcohol-associated intestinal dysbiosis impairs pulmonary host defense against Klebsiella pneumoniae – Derrick R. Samuelson – PLoS Pathogens

Review: Fungal dysbiosis: immunity and interactions at mucosal barriers – Ilian D. Iliev – Nature Reviews Immunology

Review: Transmission of the gut microbiota: spreading of health – Hilary P. Browne – Nature Reviews Microbiology

Editorial: Post-dieting weight gain: the role of persistent microbiome changes – Christoph A Thaiss – Future Microbiology

Animal experiments
*Thermoneutral housing exacerbates nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in mice and allows for sex-independent disease modeling – Daniel A. Giles – Nature Medicine

*Cold-induced conversion of cholesterol to bile acids in mice shapes the gut microbiome and promotes adaptive thermogenesis – A. Worthmann – Nature Medicine

Integrated Metagenomic Analyses of the Rumen Microbiome of Cattles Reveals Key Biological Mechanisms Associated with Methane Traits – Haiying Wang – Methods

Long-term multi-species Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium dietary supplement enhances memory and changes regional brain metabolites in middle-aged rats – Caroline O’Hagan – Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

Soy compared with milk protein in a Western diet changes fecal microbiota and decreases hepatic steatosis in obese OLETF rats – Matthew R. Panasevich – Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry

Targeted metabolomics analysis of aromatic amino acids and their gut microbiota-host co-metabolites in rat serum and urine by liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry – Yifeng Zeng – Journal of Separation Science

Effect of cocoa’s theobromine on intestinal microbiota of rats – Sandra Martin-Pelaez – Molecular Nutrition and Food Research

Water and extremophile microbiome
Review: Microbial Extracellular Polymeric Substances (EPSs) in Ocean Systems – Alan W. Decho – Frontiers in Microbiology

Review: Linking genes to microbial biogeochemical cycling: lessons from arsenic – Yong-Guan Zhu – Environmental Science and Technology

Food microbiology
Review: Extremozymes from metagenome: Potential applications in food processing – Mahejibin Khan – Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition

Phages and viruses
Review: Interplay between viruses and bacterial microbiota in cancer development – Dariia Vyshenska – Seminars in Immunology

Bioinformatics
A novel method to determine the minimum number of sequences required for reliable microbial community analysis – Jiajia Ni – Journal of Microbiological Methods

Power and sample size calculations for high-throughput sequencing-based experiments – Chung-I Li – Briefings in Bioinformatics
Only a short section on microbiome.

Techniques
*A stabilized microbial ecosystem of self-limiting bacteria using synthetic quorum-regulated lysis – Spencer R. Scott – Nature Microbiology

Body fluid prediction from microbial patterns for forensic application – Eirik Nataas Hanssen – Forensic Science International: Genetics

Multi-locus and long amplicon sequencing approach to study microbial diversity at species level using the MinIONTM portable nanopore sequencer – Alfonso Benítez-Páez – GigaScience

Review: Phenotyping of gut microbiota: Focus on capillary electrophoresis – Manuel Ferrer – Electrophoresis

Review: Panacea in progress: CRISPR and the future of its biological research introduction – Michael Carroll – Microbiological Research