Horizontally transmitted symbiont populations in deep-sea mussels are genetically isolated.

ABSTRACT: Eukaryotes are habitats for bacterial organisms where the host colonization and dispersal among individual hosts have consequences for the bacterial ecology and evolution. Vertical symbiont transmission leads to geographic isolation of the microbial population and consequently to genetic isolation of microbiotas from individual hosts. In contrast, the extent of geographic and genetic isolation of horizontally transmitted microbiota is poorly characterized. Here we show that chemosynthetic symbionts of individual Bathymodiolus brooksi mussels constitute genetically isolated subpopulations. The reconstruction of core genome-wide strains from high-resolution metagenomes revealed distinct phylogenetic clades. Nucleotide diversity and strain composition vary along the mussel life span and indiv

SUBMITTER: Romero Picazo D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6863903 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature