Rapid molecular evolution of Spiroplasma symbionts of Drosophila
is a genus of whose members include plant pathogens, insect pathogens and endosymbionts of animals. phenotypes have been repeatedly observed to be spontaneously lost in cultures, and several studies have documented a high genomic turnover in symbionts and plant pathogens. These observations suggest...
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Published in | Microbial genomics Vol. 7; no. 2 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
Microbiology Society
01.02.2021
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | is a genus of
whose members include plant pathogens, insect pathogens and endosymbionts of animals.
phenotypes have been repeatedly observed to be spontaneously lost in
cultures, and several studies have documented a high genomic turnover in
symbionts and plant pathogens. These observations suggest that
evolves quickly in comparison to other insect symbionts. Here, we systematically assess evolutionary rates and patterns of
, a natural symbiont of
. We analysed genomic evolution of
Hy within flies, and
Mel within
culture over several years. We observed that
substitution rates are among the highest reported for any bacteria, and around two orders of magnitude higher compared with other inherited arthropod endosymbionts. The absence of mismatch repair loci
and
is conserved across
, and likely contributes to elevated substitution rates. Further, the closely related strains
Mel and
Hy (>99.5 % sequence identity in shared loci) show extensive structural genomic differences, which potentially indicates a higher degree of host adaptation in
Hy, a protective symbiont of
. Finally, comparison across diverse
lineages confirms previous reports of dynamic evolution of toxins, and identifies loci similar to the male-killing toxin Spaid in several
lineages and other endosymbionts. Overall, our results highlight the peculiar nature of
genome evolution, which may explain unusual features of its evolutionary ecology. |
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Bibliography: | Raw reads for sHy-Tx can be found under NCBI BioProject accession PRJNA274591 (BioSample SAMN08102256, SRA SRR6326389). Reads from sMel-Br are stored under PRJNA507275 (SAMN10488582). All other reads and assemblies are available under NCBI BioProject PRJNA640980. |
ISSN: | 2057-5858 2057-5858 |
DOI: | 10.1099/mgen.0.000503 |