Vitamin supplementation by gut symbionts ensures metabolic homeostasis in an insect host.

ABSTRACT: Despite the demonstrated functional importance of gut microbes, our understanding of how animals regulate their metabolism in response to nutritionally beneficial symbionts remains limited. Here, we elucidate the functional importance of the African cotton stainer's (Dysdercus fasciatus) association with two actinobacterial gut symbionts and subsequently examine the insect's transcriptional response following symbiont elimination. In line with bioassays demonstrating the symbionts' contribution towards host fitness through the supplementation of B vitamins, comparative transcriptomic analyses of genes involved in import and processing of B vitamins revealed an upregulation of gene expression in aposymbiotic (symbiont-free) compared with symbiotic individuals; an expression pattern that is

SUBMITTER: Salem H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4213650 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature