Exploring the landscape of symbiotic diversity and distribution in unicellular ciliated protists.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The eukaryotic-bacterial symbiotic system plays an important role in various physiological, developmental, and evolutionary processes. However, our current understanding is largely limited to multicellular eukaryotes without adequate consideration of diverse unicellular protists, including ciliates.

Results

To investigate the bacterial profiles associated with unicellular organisms, we collected 246 ciliate samples spanning the entire Ciliophora phylum and conducted single-cell based metagenome sequencing. This effort has yielded the most extensive collection of bacteria linked to unicellular protists to date. From this dataset, we identified 883 bacterial species capable of cohabiting with ciliates, unveiling the genomes of 116 novel bacterial cohabitants along w

SUBMITTER: Zhang B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11127453 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature