Published in

Nature Research, Nature Communications, 1(7), 2016

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11071

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Cyanobacterial symbionts diverged in the late Cretaceous towards lineage-specific nitrogen fixation factories in single-celled phytoplankton

Journal article published in 2016 by Francisco M. Cornejo-Castillo, Ana M. Cabello, Guillem Salazar ORCID, P. Sanchez-Baracaldo, Patricia Sánchez-Baracaldo, Gipsi Lima-Mendez, Pascal Hingamp, Adriana Alberti, Shinichi Sunagawa ORCID, Peer Bork ORCID, Colomban de Vargas, Jeroen Raes ORCID, Chris Bowler, Patrick Wincker, Jonathan P. Zehr and other authors.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Upload
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Upload
Policy details
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Cornejo-Castillo, Francisco M. . et. al.-- 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, supplementary data, supplementary information http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11071.-- This article is contribution number 37 of Tara Oceans ; The unicellular cyanobacterium UCYN-A, one of the major contributors to nitrogen fixation in the open ocean, lives in symbiosis with single-celled phytoplankton. UCYN-A includes several closely related lineages whose partner fidelity, genome-wide expression and time of evolutionary divergence remain to be resolved. Here we detect and distinguish UCYN-A1 and UCYN-A2 lineages in symbiosis with two distinct prymnesiophyte partners in the South Atlantic Ocean. Both symbiotic systems are lineage specific and differ in the number of UCYN-A cells involved. Our analyses infer a streamlined genome expression towards nitrogen fixation in both UCYN-A lineages. Comparative genomics reveal a strong purifying selection in UCYN-A1 and UCYN-A2 with a diversification process ~91 Myr ago, in the late Cretaceous, after the low-nutrient regime period occurred during the Jurassic. These findings suggest that UCYN-A diversified in a co-evolutionary process, wherein their prymnesiophyte partners acted as a barrier driving an allopatric speciation of extant UCYN-A lineages ; This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant CGL2011-26848/BOS MicroOcean PANGENOMICS, and TANIT (CONES 2010-0036) from the Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i Recerca to S.G.A. This research was further supported by European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Investissements d'avenir grants Oceanomics (ANR-11-BTBR-OOO8) and France Génomique (ANR-10-INBS-09-08). F.M.C.-C. and A.M.C. held FPI (MICINN) fellowships and G.S. held PhD JAE-Predoc (CSIC) fellowship. S.G.A. was supported by FP7-OCEAN-2011 project ‘Micro B3’ ; Peer Reviewed