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The Jekyll and Hyde Symbiont: Could Wolbachia Be a Nutritional Mutualist?
Irene L G Newton1, Danny W Rice2
1Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA irnewton@indiana.edu.
Abstract:
The most common intracellular symbiont on the planet-Wolbachia pipientis-is infamous largely for the reproductive manipulations induced in its host. However, more recent evidence suggests that this bacterium may also serve as a nutritional mutualist in certain host backgrounds and for certain metabolites. We performed a large-scale analysis of conserved gene content across all sequenced Wolbachia genomes to infer potential nutrients made by these symbionts. We review and critically evaluate the prior research supporting a beneficial role for Wolbachia and suggest future experiments to test hypotheses of metabolic provisioning.
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