The insect pathogenic bacterium Xenorhabdus innexi has attenuated virulence in multiple insect model hosts yet encodes a potent mosquitocidal toxin.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Xenorhabdus innexi is a bacterial symbiont of Steinernema scapterisci nematodes, which is a cricket-specialist parasite and together the nematode and bacteria infect and kill crickets. Curiously, X. innexi expresses a potent extracellular mosquitocidal toxin activity in culture supernatants. We sequenced a draft genome of X. innexi and compared it to the genomes of related pathogens to elucidate the nature of specialization.

Results

Using green fluorescent protein-expressing X. innexi we confirm previous reports using culture-dependent techniques that X. innexi colonizes its nematode host at low levels (~3-8 cells per nematode), relative to other Xenorhabdus-Steinernema associations. We found that compared to the well-characterized entomopathogenic nematode symbio

SUBMITTER: Kim IH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5709968 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature