Benoît Béchade, Christian S Cabuslay, Yi Hu, Caroll M Mendonca, Bahareh Hassanpour, Jonathan Y Lin, Yangzhou Su, Valerie J Fiers, Dharman Anandarajan, Richard Lu, Chandler J Olson, Christophe Duplais, Gail L Rosen, Corrie S Moreau, Ludmilla Aristilde, John T Wertz, Jacob A Russell
While genome sequencing has expanded our knowledge of symbiosis, role assignment within multi-species microbiomes remains challenging due to genomic redundancy and the uncertainties of in vivo impacts. We address such questions, here, for a specialized nitrogen (N) recycling microbiome of turtle ants, describing a new genus and species of gut symbiont-Ischyrobacter davidsoniae (Betaproteobacteria: Burkholderiales: Alcaligenaceae)-and its in vivo physiological context. A re-analysis of amplicon sequencing data, with precisely assigned Ischyrobacter reads, revealed a seemingly ubiquitous distribution across the turtle ant genus Cephalotes, suggesting ≥50 million years since domestication...
August 9, 2023: ISME Journal