Geography, not lifestyle, explains the population structure of free-living and host-associated deep-sea hydrothermal vent snail symbionts.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Marine symbioses are predominantly established through horizontal acquisition of microbial symbionts from the environment. However, genetic and functional comparisons of free-living populations of symbionts to their host-associated counterparts are sparse. Here, we assembled the first genomes of the chemoautotrophic gammaproteobacterial symbionts affiliated with the deep-sea snail Alviniconcha hessleri from two separate hydrothermal vent fields of the Mariana Back-Arc Basin. We used phylogenomic and population genomic methods to assess sequence and gene content variation between free-living and host-associated symbionts.

Results

Our phylogenomic analyses show that the free-living and host-associated symbionts of A. hessleri from both vent fields are populations of

SUBMITTER: Hauer MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10186799 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature