Our paper is now out in its final form in @natcomms.nature.com ! We show that ancient insect symbionts can undergo extreme, convergent genome reduction to as little as ~50 kb - driven by ecological shifts and symbiont replacement.
š www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Symbiotic bacteria can have exceedingly small genomes. This study finds that ancient bacterial symbionts of planthoppers have repeatedly evolved the smallest known genomes, losing most biosynthetic fu...
