Proteomic analysis of an unculturable bacterial endosymbiont (Blochmannia) reveals high abundance of chaperonins and biosynthetic enzymes.

ABSTRACT: Many insect groups have coevolved with bacterial endosymbionts that live within specialized host cells. As a salient example, ants in the tribe Camponotini rely on Blochmannia, an intracellular bacterial mutualist that synthesizes amino acids and recycles nitrogen for the host. We performed a shotgun, label-free, LC/MS/MS quantitative proteomic analysis to investigate the proteome of Blochmannia associated with Camponotus chromaiodes. We identified more than 330 Blochmannia proteins, or 54% coverage of the predicted proteome, as well as 244 Camponotus proteins. Using the average intensity of the top 3 "best flier" peptides along with spiking of a surrogate standard at a known concentration, we estimated the concentration (fmol/μg) of those proteins with confident identification. The estima

SUBMITTER: Fan Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3599776 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature