Cytoklepty in the plankton: A host strategy to optimize the bioenergetic machinery of endosymbiotic algae.

ABSTRACT: Endosymbioses have shaped the evolutionary trajectory of life and remain ecologically important. Investigating oceanic photosymbioses can illuminate how algal endosymbionts are energetically exploited by their heterotrophic hosts and inform on putative initial steps of plastid acquisition in eukaryotes. By combining three-dimensional subcellular imaging with photophysiology, carbon flux imaging, and transcriptomics, we show that cell division of endosymbionts (Phaeocystis) is blocked within hosts (Acantharia) and that their cellular architecture and bioenergetic machinery are radically altered. Transcriptional evidence indicates that a nutrient-independent mechanism prevents symbiont cell division and decouples nuclear and plastid division. As endosymbiont plastids proliferate, the

SUBMITTER: Uwizeye C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8271700 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature