Blattabacterium

Blattabacterium is a genus of obligate mutualistic endosymbiont bacteria that are believed to inhabit all species of cockroach studied to date, with the exception of the genus Nocticola.[1] The genus' presence in the termite Mastotermes darwiniensis led to speculation, later confirmed, that termites and cockroaches are evolutionarily linked.[2][3]

Blattabacterium
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Bacteria
Phylum:
Bacteroidetes
Class:
Flavobacteriia
Order:
Flavobacteriales
Family:
Blattabacteriaceae
Genus:
Blattabacterium

Hollande & Favre, 1931
Species
  • B. cuenoti (Mercier, 1906)
  • B. relictus Clark & Kambhampati, 2003
  • B. clevelandi Clark & Kambhampati, 2003
  • B. punctulatus Clark & Kambhampati, 2003

B. cuenoti was traditionally considered the only species in the genus Blattabacterium,[4] which is in turn the only genus in the family Blattabacteriaceae;[5] however, three new species have been described hosted by different species of cockroaches in the genus Cryptocercus: Blattabacterium relictus in Cryptocercus relictus, B. clevelandi in C. clevelandi and B. punctulatus in C. darwini, C. garciai, C. punctulatus and C. wrighti.

Blattabacterium lives inside the fat cells of the fat bodies (tissues in the abdominal cavity that store fat) of its insect hosts. It serves a vital role in nitrogen recycling, which is important in insects that mainly live on plant material such as wood, which are poor in nitrogen. In insects, uric acid is a waste product of protein metabolism. After breakdown of uric acid by the host (and its other microbial flora, such as gut bacteria and fungi) into urea and/or ammonia, blattabacterium recycles nitrogen by converting these products into glutamate, and using other raw materials from the host, is able to synthesize all of the essential amino acids and several vitamins.[6][7] It appears to be transmitted to succeeding generations of the host by infection of the mother's eggs prior to their fertilization.[8]

References
  1. Nathan Lo; Tiziana Beninati; Fred Stone; James Walker; Luciano Sacchi (2007). "Cockroaches that lack Blattabacterium endosymbionts: the phylogenetically divergent genus Nocticola". Biology Letters. 3 (3): 327–330. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2006.0614. PMC 2464682. PMID 17376757.
  2. Wendy Zuckerman, The roach's secret, New Scientist, 16 April 2011
  3. Nathan Lo & Paul Eggleton, Termite Phylogenetics and Co-cladogenesis with Symbionts, Bignell, D., Roisin ,Y., & Lo, N., ed (2011), Biology of Termites: A Modern Synthesis: 27-50, doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3977-4-2
  4. Jeffrey W. Clark & Srinivas Kambhampati (2003). "Phylogenetic analysis of Blattabacterium, endosymbiotic bacteria from the wood roach, Cryptocercus (Blattodea: Cryptocercidae), including a description of three new species". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 26 (1): 82–88. doi:10.1016/S1055-7903(02)00330-5. PMID 12470940.
  5. D. R. Boone; R. W. Castenholz, eds. (2001). Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology. Volume 1. The Archaea and the deeply branching and phototrophic Bacteria (2nd ed.). New York: Springer-Verlag. pp. 465–466. ISBN 978-0-387-98771-2.
  6. Sabree, Zakee L.; Kambhampati, Srinivas; Moran, Nancy A. (2009). "Nitrogen recycling and nutritional provisioning by Blattabacterium, the cockroach endosymbiont". PNAS. 106 (46): 19521–19526. doi:10.1073/pnas.0907504106. PMC 2780778. PMID 19880743.
  7. Patiño-Navarrete, R; Piulachs, MD; Belles, X; Moya, A; Latorre, A; Peretó (Jul 2014). "The cockroach Blattella germanica obtains nitrogen from uric acid through a metabolic pathway shared with its bacterial endosymbiont". J. Biol Lett. 10: 7. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2014.0407.
  8. Carrasco, P; Pérez-Cobas, AE; van de Pol, C; Baixeras, J; Moya, A; Latorre, A (2014). "Succession of the gut microbiota in the cockroach Blattella germanica". Int Microbiol. 17: 99–109. doi:10.2436/20.1501.01.212. PMID 26418854.

Further reading


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