Articles of Significant Interest in This Issue

Densely Populated Water Droplets in Heavy-Oil Seeps Most of the microbial degradation in oil reservoirs takes place at the oil-water transition zone between the oil leg and the underlying water. However, Pannekens et al. (e00164-20) proved that microliter-sized water droplets dispersed in biodegraded heavy-oil seeps act as densely populated microhabitats, containing actively living microbial communities. Since these microhabitats occurred in all three tested oil seeps, which are located thousands of kilometers from each other, such populated water droplets might be a generic trait of biodegraded oil reservoirs and possibly be involved in the overall oil degradation process.