ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2017
Primates, Lice and Bacteria: Speciation and Genome Evolution in the Symbionts of Hominid Lice.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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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
30 citing papers in PubMed, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- Detection and Genetic Diversity of Heritable Bacterial Symbionts in Human Lice Based on 16S-rRNA Gene.Environmental microbiology reports · 2026Article
- Effect of Oceanic Islands on an Insect Symbiont Genome in Transition to a Host-Restricted Lifestyle.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- An obligate symbiont ofApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- From insect endosymbiont to phloem colonizer: comparative genomics unveils the lifestyle transition of phytopathogenicmSystems · 2025Article
- Stochasticity, determinism, and contingency shape genome evolution of endosymbiotic bacteria.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Microbiota in disease-transmitting vectors.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2023Review
- Lipid metabolism dysfunction following symbiont elimination is linked to altered Kennedy pathway homeostasis.iScience · 2023Article
- Genome analysis of "Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Nuclear genetic diversity of head lice sheds light on human dispersal around the world.PloS one · 2023Article
- Complex host/symbiont integration of a multi-partner symbiotic system in the eusocial aphidiScience · 2022Article
- Genomic Approaches to Uncovering the Coevolutionary History of Parasitic Lice.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Ecological Contacts and Host Specificity Promote Replacement of Nutritional Endosymbionts in Ticks.Microbial ecology · 2022Article
- Phylogenetic relationship between the endosymbiont "Candidatus Riesia pediculicola" and its human louse host.Parasites & vectors · 2022Article
- Light sheet fluorescence microscopy for the investigation of blood-sucking arthropods dyed via artificial membrane feeding.Parasites & vectors · 2022Article
- Development and validation of an LC-MS/MS method for determination of B vitamins and some its derivatives in whole blood.PloS one · 2022Article
- Article
- Endosymbiotic bacteria of the boar louseFrontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Evolutionary genomics of APSE: a tailed phage that lysogenically converts the bacterium Hamiltonella defensa into a heritable protective symbiont of aphids.Virology journal · 2021Article
- Essential gene acquisition destabilizes plasmid inheritance.PLoS genetics · 2021Article
- The reduced genome of a heritable symbiont from an ectoparasitic feather feeding louse.BMC ecology and evolution · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Insects with restricted diets rely on symbiotic bacteria to provide essential metabolites missing in their diet. The blood-sucking lice are obligate, host-specific parasites of mammals and are themselves host to symbiotic bacteria. In human lice, these bacterial symbionts supply the lice with B-vitamins. Here, we sequenced the genomes of symbiotic and heritable bacterial of human, chimpanzee, gorilla, and monkey lice and used phylogenomics to investigate their evolutionary relationships. We find that these symbionts have a phylogenetic history reflecting the louse phylogeny, a finding contrary to previous reports of symbiont replacement. Examination of the highly reduced symbiont genomes (0.53-0.57 Mb) reveals much of the genomes are dedicated to vitamin synthesis. This is unchanged in the smallest symbiont genome and one that appears to have been reorganized. Specifically, symbionts from human lice, chimpanzee lice, and gorilla lice carry a small plasmid that encodes synthesis of vitamin B5, a vitamin critical to the bacteria-louse symbiosis. This plasmid is absent in an old world monkey louse symbiont, where this pathway is on its primary chromosome. This suggests the unique genomic configuration brought about by the plasmid is not essential for symbiosis, but once obtained, it has persisted for up to 25 My. We also find evidence that human, chimpanzee, and gorilla louse endosymbionts have lost a pathway for synthesis of vitamin B1, whereas the monkey louse symbiont has retained this pathway. It is unclear whether these changes are adaptive, but they may point to evolutionary responses of louse symbionts to shifts in primate biology.
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