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Dryad

Metagenomic bins and biosynthetic gene clusters in gut bacteria of turtle ants

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Mar 11, 2021 version files 227.55 MB

Abstract

Cephalotes are herbivorous ants (>115 species) feeding on low-nitrogen food sources and they rely on gut symbionts to supplement their diet in nutrients by recycling nitrogen food waste into amino acids. These conserved gut symbionts, composed of five bacterial orders, have been studied previously for their primary nitrogen metabolism, however little is known about their ability to biosynthesize specialized metabolites which can play a role in bacterial interactions between communities living in close proximity in the gut. We investigated the diversity of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) producing specialized metabolites in the genomes and metagenomes of conserved gut symbionts by studying 17 Cephalotes species collected across several geographical areas. Our results reveal that (1) mining metagenomes and genomes show complementary results to retrieve BGCs especially when bacterial isolates are difficult to culture, (2) the conserved gut symbionts involved in the nutritional symbiosis have a large diversity of BGCs of different chemical families, (3) the phylogenetic analysis of BGCs encoding the production of arylpolyenes, non-ribosomal peptides (NRP), polyketides (PK), and siderophores shows high similarity between BGCs of a single symbiont across different ant host species, and between BGCs originated from different bacterial orders within a single host species. Additionally, the diversity of BGCs was found in four of the five conserved symbionts co-occurring in the hindgut except for one major player (Opitutales) localized alone in the midgut and lacking BGCs. This spatial isolation prevents direct interaction of Opitutales with other symbionts and suggesting that BGCs have an essential role for symbionts living in close proximity. These findings together pave the way for studying the mechanisms of BGCs conservation and evolution in gut symbionts genomes and the role of bacterial specialized metabolites involved in multipartite mutualism with Cephalotes turtle ants.