Sanmartín Sánchez, PatriciaBosch-Roig, PilarPangallo, DomenicoKraková, LuciaSerrano Pérez, Luis Miguel2023-03-222023-03-222023Sanmartín, P., Bosch-Roig, P., Pangallo, D. et al. Unraveling disparate roles of organisms, from plants to bacteria, and viruses on built cultural heritage. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-023-12423-50175-7598http://hdl.handle.net/10347/30380The different organisms, ranging from plants to bacteria, and viruses that dwell on built cultural heritage can be passive or active participants in conservation processes. For the active participants, particular attention is generally given to organisms that play a positive role in bioprotection, bioprecipitation, bioconsolidation, bioremediation, biocleaning, and biological control and to those involved in providing ecosystem services, such as reducing temperature, pollution, and noise in urban areas. The organisms can also evolve or mutate in response to changes, becoming tolerant and resistant to biocidal treatments or acquiring certain capacities, such as water repellency or resistance to ultraviolet radiation. Our understanding of the capacities and roles of these active organisms is constantly evolving as bioprotection/biodeterioration, and biotreatment studies are conducted and new techniques for characterizing species are developed. This brief review article aims to shed light on interesting research that has been abandoned as well as on recent (some ongoing) studies opening up new scopes of research involving a wide variety of organisms and viruses, which are likely to receive more attention in the coming yeareng©2023 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Atribución 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Biocontrol agents (BCAs)BiotreatmentEcological factorsSpecies adaptationSpecies role in ecosystemsStone-built heritagejournal article10.1007/s00253-023-12423-51432-0614open access