Michael Lansford, a student at the University of Rochester, worked with Dustin Dial and Dr. Gaelen Burke<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abstract: Adelgids\nare sap-sucking insects that contain bacterial endosymbionts to help them synthesize\nessential amino acids. The adelgid life cycle alternates between sexual\ngenerations that parasitize spruce as a primary host and asexual generations\nthat parasitize a secondary host plant species. The adelgid family consists of\nfive lineages each with a different secondary host plant: Douglas fir, fir,\nhemlock, larch, and pine. Each adelgid lineage has a different pair of symbionts,\na primary symbiont that was acquired by the adelgid first and a secondary\nsymbiont that was acquired second. Vallotia is\na symbiont shared between the Douglas fir lineage, where it is the secondary symbiont,\nand the larch lineage, where it is the primary symbiont. To determine the nutritional\nroles of Vallotia in different species,\ngenomic data were searched for genes involved in amino acid synthesis. FastQC\nwas used to evaluate the quality of raw adelgid read data. The Georgia Advanced\nComputing Research Center (GACRC) cluster was used to assemble and annotate\ngenomes from the raw reads. After running scripts to assemble raw reads into\nscaffolds, BLAST was used to identify which scaffolds were from symbionts.\nSymbiont genes were annotated using PROKKA and Geneious Prime and biochemical\npathways were reconstructed with help from BioCyc. The results showed that Vallotia\nis primarily responsible for synthesis of all essential amino acids\nexcept cysteine in the Douglas fir lineage species A.\ncooleyi. Gillettellia,\nthe primary symbiont in the Douglas fir lineage, works together with Vallotia\nin lysine and aromatic amino acid synthesis. In both larch lineage\nspecies, Vallotia is only responsible for\nthe final steps in tryptophan synthesis and depends on the secondary symbiont Profftia\nin A. lariciatus and probably A.\nabeitis for most steps in aromatic synthesis. These results suggest that Vallotia\nwas acquired by the Douglas fir lineage to account for the loss of\nmost synthesis genes in Gillettellia and Profftia\nwas acquired by the larch lineage to account for the loss of\naromatic synthesis genes in Vallotia.<\/p>\n\n\nLansford_new<\/a>\n Michael Lansford, a student at the University of Rochester, worked with Dustin Dial and Dr. Gaelen Burke Abstract: Adelgids are sap-sucking insects that contain bacterial endosymbionts to help them synthesize essential amino acids. The adelgid life cycle alternates between sexual generations that parasitize spruce as a primary host and asexual generations that parasitize a secondary<\/p>\n