Editorial: The Individual Microbe: Single-Cell Analysis and Agent-Based Modelling

The field of microbial individual-based ecology, or µIBE (Kreft et al., 2013), is grounded in the notion that to truly understand the interactions of microorganisms with their biotic and abiotic environment, one cannot ignore the scales at which such interactions occur. The collection and interpretation of data along these scales (from very small spatial dimensions to very large population sizes) remains a major challenge. Embracing the idea that “progress in science depends on new techniques, new discoveries, and new ideas, probably in that order” (Brenner, 2002), we introduce here a collection of 14 articles authored by 65 leading experts on the topic of “The Individual Microbe” (https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/5193). We frame these articles
in a narrative that explores the progress made on techniques that extract and process information from individual microbes (IMs) and their environment, how that information allows the discovery and prediction of novel single-cell behaviors, and how those discoveries might generate new ideas about the outcomes and impacts of microscopic activity at macroscopic levels.