Dear Colleagues,

During the last decade, we have faced a rampant release of microbial genomic data due to the progressive access of thousands of world-dispersed labs to equipment such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). In addition, the obvious decline of NGS-associated costs has allowed for the molecular epidemiology field to enter a new era by replacing the laborious and less informative traditional typing methods with information based on whole genomes. These methodological advances are always coupled with the extensive development of bioinformatic approaches to analyze genomic data in a more robust and accurate fashion. Due to the availability of billions of microbial genome sequences in public databases, we now have a clearer picture of how microbes evolve, about the mechanism of disease, their arsenal of virulence factors and resistance markers, as well as their tropism and geographic distribution.  

This Special Issue, “Advances in Microbial Genomics and Evolution”, of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences will comprise a selection of research papers and reviews that will contribute to a better understanding of such tiny “creatures” that have a massive impact on our lives.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Microbial evolution;
• Genetics underlying tissue- and host tropism;
• Population genetics;
• Virulence factors and microbial drug resistance;
• Genomics underlying the mechanism of the disease.

Since IJMS is a journal of molecular science, pure clinical/investigation studies will not be suitable for our journal. However, clinical submissions with biomolecular experiments are welcomed.

Dr. Joao Paulo Gomes
Guest Editor

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. 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.

• microbial evolution
• adaptation
• virulence
• tissue tropism
• population genetics
• mechanisms of disease
• intra-host genetic diversity