ArticleBiology letters2014
The cockroach Blattella germanica obtains nitrogen from uric acid through a metabolic pathway shared with its bacterial endosymbiont.
Article in Biology letters, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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28 citing papers in PubMed, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Comparative Transcriptomics of Fat Bodies between Symbiotic and Quasi-Aposymbiotic Adult Females ofInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Gut Microbiota Is Not Essential for Survival and Development inLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
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- King- and queen-specific degradation of uric acid contributes to reproduction in termites.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Coevolution of Metabolic Pathways in Blattodea and TheirMicrobiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Identification of the Gene Repertoire of the IMD Pathway and Expression of Antimicrobial Peptide Genes in Several Tissues and Hemolymph of the CockroachInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Eating in a losing cause: limited benefit of modified macronutrient consumption following infection in the oriental cockroach Blatta orientalis.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Of Cockroaches and Symbionts: Recent Advances in the Characterization of the Relationship betweenLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Nitrogen Acquisition Strategies Mediated by Insect Symbionts: A Review of Their Mechanisms, Methodologies, and Case Studies.Insects · 2022Review
- MEDI: Macronutrient Extraction and Determination from invertebrates, a rapid, cheap and streamlined protocol.Methods in ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Blattella germanica displays a large arsenal of antimicrobial peptide genes.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Bacteria associated with cockroaches: health risk or biotechnological opportunity?Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2020Review
- gNOMO: a multi-omics pipeline for integrated host and microbiome analysis of non-model organisms.NAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2020Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Uric acid stored in the fat body of cockroaches is a nitrogen reservoir mobilized in times of scarcity. The discovery of urease in Blattabacterium cuenoti, the primary endosymbiont of cockroaches, suggests that the endosymbiont may participate in cockroach nitrogen economy. However, bacterial urease may only be one piece in the entire nitrogen recycling process from insect uric acid. Thus, in addition to the uricolytic pathway to urea, there must be glutamine synthetase assimilating the released ammonia by the urease reaction to enable the stored nitrogen to be metabolically usable. None of the Blattabacterium genomes sequenced to date possess genes encoding for those enzymes. To test the host's contribution to the process, we have sequenced and analysed Blattella germanica transcriptomes from the fat body. We identified transcripts corresponding to all genes necessary for the synthesis of uric acid and its catabolism to urea, as well as for the synthesis of glutamine, asparagine, proline and glycine, i.e. the amino acids required by the endosymbiont. We also explored the changes in gene expression with different dietary protein levels. It appears that the ability to use uric acid as a nitrogen reservoir emerged in cockroaches after its age-old symbiotic association with bacteria.
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