Section: New Results

Genomics of symbiosis

Insect symbioses are model systems for studying the effect of symbionts and the evolution of bacterial genomes. Members from the LBBE described the symbiotic complement of different biotypes of the insect Bemisia tabaci in Western Africa. We further obtained the complete genome of different symbionts that co-exist in Bemisia tabaci, among which the the primary symbiont Portiera [25] , Hamiltonella, Rickettsia and Wolbachia. Analyses are underway, that concern the possible complementation between Hamiltonella and Portiera and the comparative analyses of different Hamiltonella genomes.