Lateral transfers of insertion sequences between Wolbachia, Cardinium and Rickettsia bacterial endosymbionts

Short- and Long-term Evolutionary Dynamics of Bacterial Insertion Sequences: Insights from Wolbachia Endosymbionts

Transposable elements (TE) are one of the major driving forces of genome evolution, raising the question of the long-term dynamics underlying their evolutionary success. Long-term TE evolution can readily be reconstructed in eukaryotes, thanks to many degraded copies constituting genomic fossil records of past TE proliferations. By contrast, bacterial genomes usually experience high sequence tu...

Screening of spider mites (Acari: Tetranychidae) for reproductive endosymbionts reveals links between co-infection and evolutionary history

Reproductive endosymbionts have been shown to have wide-ranging effects on many aspects of their hosts' biology. A first step to understanding how these endosymbionts interact with their hosts is to determine their incidences. Here, we screened for four reproductive endosymbionts (Wolbachia, Cardinium, Spiroplasma and Rickettsia) in 28 populations of spider mites (Acari: Tetranychidae) represen...

Recombination in wolbachia endosymbionts of filarial nematodes?

Remarkable abundance and evolution of mobile group II introns in Wolbachia bacterial endosymbionts.

The streamlined genomes of ancient obligate endosymbionts generally lack transposable elements, as a consequence of their intracellular confinement. Yet, the genomes of Wolbachia, one of the most abundant bacterial endosymbionts on Earth, are littered with transposable elements, in particular insertion sequences (ISs). This paradox raises the question of whether or not such a mobile DNA prolife...

Bacteriophage flux in endosymbionts (Wolbachia): infection frequency, lateral transfer, and recombination rates.

The highly specialized genomes of bacterial endosymbionts typically lack one of the major contributors of genomic flux in the free-living microbial world-bacteriophages. This study yields three results that show bacteriophages have, to the contrary, been influential in the genome evolution of the most prevalent bacterial endosymbiont of invertebrates, Wolbachia. First, we show that bacteriophag...