Multiple Lineages of Nematode-Wolbachia Symbiosis in Supergroup F and Convergent Loss of Bacterioferritin in Filarial Wolbachia

Abstract

The intracellular endosymbiotic proteobacteria Wolbachia have evolved across the phyla nematoda and arthropoda. In Wolbachia phylogeny, supergroup F is the only clade known so far with members from both arthropod and filarial nematode hosts and therefore can provide unique insights into their evolution and biology. In this study, 4 new supergroup F Wolbachia genomes have been assembled using a metagenomic assembly and binning approach, wMoz and wMpe from the human filarial parasites Mansonella ozzardi and Mansonella perstans, and wOcae and wMoviF from the blue mason bee Osmia caerulescens and the sheep ked Melophagus ovinus respectively. A comprehensive phylogenomic analysis revealed two distinct lineages of filarial Wolbachia in supergroup F, indicating multiple horizontal transfer events between arthropod and nematode hosts. The analysis also reveals that the evolution of Wolbachia-filaria symbioses is accompanied by a convergent pseudogenization and loss of the bacterioferritin gene, a phenomenon found to be shared by all filarial Wolbachia, even those outside supergroup F. These observations indicate that differences in heme metabolism might be a key feature distinguishing filarial and arthropod Wolbachia. The new genomes provide a valuable resource for further studies on symbiosis, evolution, and the discovery of new antibiotics to treat mansonellosis.

Microbiome and mitogenomics of the chigger mite Pentidionis agamae: potential role as an Orientia vector and associations with divergent clades of Wolbachia and Borrelia

“…S2), indicating the presence of a single Wolbachia genome. Further, the BUSCO analysis did not show a high rate of duplication of core Wolbachia genes, which can typically be observed in MAGs containing more than one Wolbachia (an example being the Wolbachia symbionts of the sheep ked, Melophagus ovinus [ 40 ]). As further quality check to ensure that the w Paga placement in the phylogenomic tree represents its true genetic divergence from other Wolbachia rather than being an artefact caused by combining MAGs originating from Wolbachia of different known supergroups, individual phylogenetic trees of each of the 32 single copy orthologs were inspected carefully.…”

Metagenomics of culture isolates and insect tissue illuminate the evolution of Wolbachia, Rickettsia and Bartonella symbionts in Ctenocephalides spp. fleas

“…S5). So far, w Cle is the only member of supergroup F known to harbour a complete biotin operon (known as the Biotin synthesis Operon of Obligate intracellular Microbes or BOOM) [90], supporting its role as a nutrition-provisioning symbiont in the bedbug host [38]. w CfeF also carried BOOM; however, the biotin synthase ( bioB ) gene was pseudogenized, as confirmed by PCR and Sanger sequencing.…”

“…Thus, the presence of a highly similar w CfeJ isolate in Malaysia is remarkable. Here, we assign the American and Malaysian strains of w CfeJ to a new Wolbachia supergroup (V) that so far has no other members described worldwide, although it appears to have affinities with supergroup F, the Wolbachia clade with the broadest taxonomic host range [90].…”

Molecular surveillance detects high prevalence of the neglected parasiteMansonella ozzardiin the Colombian Amazon

“…Raw Illumina reads were processed to remove adapters and poor-quality reads using the BBTools package (https://jgi.doe.gov/data-and-tools/bbtools/). For each isolate, the reads were mapped to a combined reference sequence set comprising a M. ozzardi reference genome from Brazil [16], a reference mitogenome KX822021.1 [33] and the Wolbachia wMoz assembly GCF_020278625.1 [34] using bowtie2 [35]. Reads mapping to mitochondria were extracted from the bam alignment files using samtools [36] and assembled into circular mitochondrial genomes using GetOrganelle v1.7.7.0 [37].…”