A new paper from the lab, led by Junchen, has just been published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution! We describe symbiosis composition in three species from the planthopper genus Pyrops, and then compare the organization and other features of symbiont genomes from different clades of hoppers to conclude about their origins.

We concluded that betaproteobacterial symbionts that infect planthoppers, leafhoppers and spittlebugs - hemipteran clades that diverged hundreds of millions of years ago - are likely to have colonized insects several times independently, rather than originating from a single infection in the ancestor of all these insects that lived over 300 million years ago. 

This is the second article in Genome Biology and Evolution that we have published within a month! 

 

The paper is available, in open access, from the publisher's website:

Deng J., Bennett G.M., Franco D.C., Prus-Frankowska M., Stroiński A., Michalik A., Łukasik P. (2023): Genome comparison reveals inversions and alternative evolutionary history of nutritional endosymbionts in planthoppers (Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha). Genome Biology and Evolution 15(7): evad120. https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evad120

 

Added: 1st July 2023