Marine amoebae with cytoplasmic and perinuclear symbionts deeply branching in the Gammaproteobacteria.

ABSTRACT: Amoebae play an important ecological role as predators in microbial communities. They also serve as niche for bacterial replication, harbor endosymbiotic bacteria and have contributed to the evolution of major human pathogens. Despite their high diversity, marine amoebae and their association with bacteria are poorly understood. Here we describe the isolation and characterization of two novel marine amoebae together with their bacterial endosymbionts, tentatively named 'Candidatus Occultobacter vannellae' and 'Candidatus Nucleophilum amoebae'. While one amoeba strain is related to Vannella, a genus common in marine habitats, the other represents a novel lineage in the Amoebozoa. The endosymbionts showed only low similarity to known bacteria (85-88% 16S rRNA sequence similarity) but togethe

SUBMITTER: Schulz F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4642509 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature