Title
Species in Wolbachia? Proposal for the designation of 'Candidatus Wolbachia bourtzisii', 'Candidatus Wolbachia onchocercicola', 'Candidatus Wolbachia blaxteri', 'Candidatus Wolbachia brugii', 'Candidatus Wolbachia taylori', 'Candidatus Wolbachia collembolicola' and 'Candidatus Wolbachia multihospitum' for the different species within Wolbachia supergroups
Date Issued
01 September 2015
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Ramírez-Puebla S.T.
Servín-Garcidueñas L.E.
Vera-Ponce de León A.
Rosenblueth M.
Delaye L.
Martínez J.
Martínez-Romero E.
Abstract
Wolbachia are highly extended bacterial endosymbionts that infect arthropods and filarial nematodes and produce contrasting phenotypes on their hosts. Wolbachia taxonomy has been understudied. Currently, Wolbachia strains are classified into phylogenetic supergroups. Here we applied phylogenomic analyses to study Wolbachia evolutionary relationships and examined metrics derived from their genome sequences such as average nucleotide identity (ANI), in silico DNA-DNA hybridization (DDH), G + C content, and synteny to shed light on the taxonomy of these bacteria. Draft genome sequences of strains wDacA and wDacB obtained from the carmine cochineal insect Dactylopius coccus were included. Although all analyses indicated that each Wolbachia supergroup represents a distinct evolutionary lineage, we found that some of the analyzed supergroups showed enough internal heterogeneity to be considered as assemblages of more than one species. Thus, supergroups would represent supraspecific groupings. Consequently, Wolbachia pipientis nomen species would apply only to strains of supergroup B and we propose the designation of 'Candidatus Wolbachia bourtzisii', 'Candidatus Wolbachia onchocercicola', 'Candidatus Wolbachia blaxterii', 'Candidatus Wolbachia brugii', 'Candidatus Wolbachia taylorii', 'Candidatus Wolbachia collembolicola' and 'Candidatus Wolbachia multihospitis' for other supergroups.
Start page
390
End page
399
Volume
38
Issue
6
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencias naturales
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84966458717
PubMed ID
Source
Systematic and Applied Microbiology
ISSN of the container
07232020
Sponsor(s)
This work was supported by CONACyT basic science grant 154453 . Results presented in this paper are part of the PhD thesis by S. T. Ramírez-Puebla, A. Vera-Ponce de León and L. E. Servín-Garcidueñas. They are students from the Programa de Doctorado en Ciencias Biomédicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and each was recipient of a scholarship from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), México. We thank Mariana Mateos for discussion and Michael Dunn for critical reading of this manuscript.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus