A dual endosymbiosis supports nutritional adaptation to hematophagy in the invasive tick Hyalomma marginatum.

ABSTRACT: Many animals are dependent on microbial partners that provide essential nutrients lacking from their diet. Ticks, whose diet consists exclusively on vertebrate blood, rely on maternally inherited bacterial symbionts to supply B vitamins. While previously studied tick species consistently harbor a single lineage of those nutritional symbionts, we evidence here that the invasive tick Hyalomma marginatum harbors a unique dual-partner nutritional system between an ancestral symbiont, Francisella, and a more recently acquired symbiont, Midichloria. Using metagenomics, we show that Francisella exhibits extensive genome erosion that endangers the nutritional symbiotic interactions. Its genome includes folate and riboflavin biosynthesis pathways but deprived functional

SUBMITTER: Buysse M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8709577 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature