Extremely Low Genomic Diversity of Rickettsia japonica Distributed in Japan.

ABSTRACT: Rickettsiae are obligate intracellular bacteria that have small genomes as a result of reductive evolution. Many Rickettsia species of the spotted fever group (SFG) cause tick-borne diseases known as "spotted fevers". The life cycle of SFG rickettsiae is closely associated with that of the tick, which is generally thought to act as a bacterial vector and reservoir that maintains the bacterium through transstadial and transovarial transmission. Each SFG member is thought to have adapted to a specific tick species, thus restricting the bacterial distribution to a relatively limited geographic region. These unique features of SFG rickettsiae allow investigation of how the genomes of such biologically and ecologically specialized bacteria evolve after genome reduction and the types of populati

SUBMITTER: Akter A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5381555 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature