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] 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
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

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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