ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2009
Symbiotic bacteria enable insect to use a nutritionally inadequate diet.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 116 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
116 citing papers in PubMed, 295 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Symbiotic Bacterial Diversity, Functional Profiling and Antibiotic Susceptibility of the Red Imported Fire Ant.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Cross-domain cooperation drives nutrient acquisition and metabolism in the bark beetle holobiont.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- The stored product beetles Lasioderma serricorne and Stegobium paniceum are associated with a flexible and hidden diversity of Symbiotaphrina symbionts.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Gut Symbiont-Driven Adaptive Evolution of Herbivorous Insect-Plant Interactions and Its Ecological Implications.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Changes in the behavior ofAnnals of the Entomological Society of America · 2025Article
- Three Antibiotics Exert Differential Effects on the Larval Microbiome and Fitness ofMicroorganisms · 2025Article
- Characterizing the evolution of defense in a tripartite marine symbiosis using adaptive dynamics.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Article
- Insect‒microbe symbiosis-based strategies offer a new avenue for the management of insect pests and their transmitted pathogens.Crop health · 2024Review
- Colony performance of three native bumblebee species from South China and association with their gut microbiome.Insect science · 2024Article
- Diversity and functional characteristics of culturable bacterial endosymbionts from cassava whitefly biotype Asia II-5,3 Biotech · 2024Article
- Impact of Larval Food Source on the Stability of the Bactrocera dorsalis Microbiome.Microbial ecology · 2024Article
- Evolutionary history of tyrosine-supplementing endosymbionts in pollen-feeding beetles.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- The nutritional dimension of facultative bacterial symbiosis in aphids: Current status and methodological considerations for future research.Current research in insect science · 2024Review
- Insect Microbial Symbionts: Ecology, Interactions, and Biological Significance.Microorganisms · 2023Review
- The Characterization ofInsects · 2023Article
- Bacterial Communities Are Less Diverse in a Strepsipteran Endoparasitoid than in Its Fruit Fly Hosts and Dominated by Wolbachia.Microbial ecology · 2023Article
- Article
- Complex host/symbiont integration of a multi-partner symbiotic system in the eusocial aphidiScience · 2022Article
56 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Animals generally require a dietary supply of various nutrients (vitamins, essential amino acids, etc.) because their biosynthetic capabilities are limited. The capacity of aphids to use plant phloem sap, with low essential amino acid content, has been attributed to their symbiotic bacteria, Buchnera aphidicola, which can synthesize these nutrients; but this has not been demonstrated empirically. We demonstrate here that phloem sap obtained from the severed stylets of pea aphids Acyrthosiphon pisum feeding on Vicia faba plants generally provided inadequate amounts of at least one essential amino acid to support aphid growth. Complementary analyses using aphids reared on chemically defined diets with each amino acid individually omitted revealed that the capacity of the symbiotic bacterium B. aphidicola to synthesize essential amino acids exceeded the dietary deficit of all phloem amino acids except methionine. It is proposed that this shortfall of methionine was met by aphid usage of the non-protein amino acid 5-methylmethionine in the phloem sap. This study provides the first quantitative demonstration that bacterial symbiosis can meet the nutritional demand of plant-reared aphids. It shows how symbiosis with micro-organisms has enabled this group of animals to escape from the constraint of requiring a balanced dietary supply of amino acids.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.