This was a busy but productive week! Four preprints from our lab, led by Catalina Valdivia, Junchen Deng, Michał Kolasa, and Anna Michalik, have just been posted on-line as preprints!
Preprints are research articles that are essentially complete but have not yet gone through peer review or formal publication in a journal and are generally not in their final form. However, posting such articles on a preprint server such as bioRxiv is a great way of ensuring that results and conclusions can be accessed and cited by other researchers, or the general public, early on!
In the article "Genome comparison reveals inversions and alternative evolutionary history of nutritional endosymbionts in planthoppers (Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha)" led by Junchen Deng, we present the organization of symbioses in a genus of Asian planthoppers, and compare the genome organization across ancient nutritional endosymbionts of sap-sucking insects to conclude about their origins. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.07.519479
In the article "Variable organization of symbiont-containing tissue across planthoppers hosting different heritable endosymbionts" led by Anna Michalik, we combine several types of microscopy with high-throughput sequencing to demonstrate how different symbiotic microorganisms are distributed within bodies of diverse planthoppers, and how symbiont-containing tissue is organized. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.06.519352
Article "Till evolution do us part: The diversity of symbiotic associations across populations of Philaenus spittlebugs", led by Michał Kolasa, describes the distribution of several clades of symbiotic microorganisms across populations of different spittlebug species. It also demonstrates the utility of multi-target amplicon sequencing implemented by our group for identifying potential confounding factors in microbiome studies, such as parasitoid fly infections and the contributions of their microbiota to the overall picture. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.05.519182
Finally, the preprint "Microbial symbionts are shared between ants and their associated beetles" led by Catalina Valdivia demonstrates a large overlap in microbial communities between unrelated insects that interacts closely (army ants and their associated beetles), and then shows that related bacteria can colonize animal hosts as diverse as ants, beetles, fish, and whales! https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.02.518891
Congratulations to all authors!!!
Posted: 11th December 2022