ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2009
Nitrogen recycling and nutritional provisioning by Blattabacterium, the cockroach endosymbiont.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 168 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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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Who cites it
168 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 300 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Gut microbiota-mediated nitrogen recycling in the white Grub Holotrichia longipennis: A model for microbiome-targeted pest control.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2026Article
- Insects as a New Source of Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria - Review.Microbial ecology · 2026Review
- Niche specialization and cross-feeding interactions shaping gut microbial fiber degradation in a model omnivore.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Cockroach bacteriocytes migrate into the ovaries for vertical transmission of the bacterial endosymbiont Blattabacterium.Zoological letters · 2026Article
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- The facultative intracellular symbiontFrontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
108 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Nitrogen acquisition and assimilation is a primary concern of insects feeding on diets largely composed of plant material. Reclaiming nitrogen from waste products provides a rich reserve for this limited resource, provided that recycling mechanisms are in place. Cockroaches, unlike most terrestrial insects, excrete waste nitrogen within their fat bodies as uric acids, postulated to be a supplement when dietary nitrogen is limited. The fat bodies of most cockroaches are inhabited by Blattabacterium, which are vertically transmitted, Gram-negative bacteria that have been hypothesized to participate in uric acid degradation, nitrogen assimilation, and nutrient provisioning. We have sequenced completely the Blattabacterium genome from Periplaneta americana. Genomic analysis confirms that Blattabacterium is a member of the Flavobacteriales (Bacteroidetes), with its closest known relative being the endosymbiont Sulcia muelleri, which is found in many sap-feeding insects. Metabolic reconstruction indicates that it lacks recognizable uricolytic enzymes, but it can recycle nitrogen from urea and ammonia, which are uric acid degradation products, into glutamate, using urease and glutamate dehydrogenase. Subsequently, Blattabacterium can produce all of the essential amino acids, various vitamins, and other required compounds from a limited palette of metabolic substrates. The ancient association with Blattabacterium has allowed cockroaches to subsist successfully on nitrogen-poor diets and to exploit nitrogenous wastes, capabilities that are critical to the ecological range and global distribution of cockroach species.
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