To understand symbiotic phenomena broadly, we have selected two very different study systems for the following rationale:
- Marine bivalve-gammaproteobacterial chemosynthetic mutualisms
- Tractable experimental marine symbiosis
- Accessible populations for next-gen short and long read sequencing
- Results are broadly applicable across these ancient associations
- Fruit fly- Wolbachia manipulative symbioses
- Powerful model organism with established tools and protocols
- Symbiont-host co-cell culture
- High quality symbiont and host nuclear genomes available
- Bacterial mechanisms for host manipulation can be applied to insect disease vector control
Using these associations, we have characterized the main evolutionary drivers of symbiont genome evolution and identified host and symbiont genes involved in symbiont mobility within host cells (see Publications). Our future work will use these systems to dive deeper into the molecular mechanisms and selection pressures that drive symbiont transmission modes.