Sequencing the Obligate Intracellular Rhabdochlamydia helvetica within Its Tick Host Ixodes ricinus to Investigate Their Symbiotic Relationship.

ABSTRACT: The Rhabdochlamydiaceae family is one of the most widely distributed within the phylum Chlamydiae, but most of its members remain uncultivable. Rhabdochlamydia 16S rRNA was recently reported in more than 2% of 8,534 pools of ticks from Switzerland. Shotgun metagenomics was performed on a pool of five female Ixodes ricinus ticks presenting a high concentration of chlamydial DNA, allowing the assembly of a high-quality draft genome. About 60% of sequence reads originated from a single bacterial population that was named "Candidatus Rhabdochlamydia helvetica" whereas only few thousand reads mapped to the genome of "Candidatus Midichloria mitochondrii," a symbiont normally observed in all I. ricinus females. The 1.8 Mbp genome of R. helvetica is smaller than other Chlamydia-related bacteria. C

SUBMITTER: Pillonel T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6490308 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature