RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Nature lessons: the whitefly bacterial endosymbiont is a minimal amino acid factory with unusual energetics JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 043349 DO 10.1101/043349 A1 Jorge Calle-Espinosa A1 Miguel Ponce-de-Leon A1 Diego Santos-Garcia A1 Francisco J. Silva A1 Francisco Montero A1 Juli Peretó YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/03/11/043349.abstract AB Bacterial lineages that establish obligate symbiotic associations with insect hosts are known to possess highly reduced genomes with streamlined metabolic functions that are commonly focused on amino acid and vitamin synthesis. We constructed a genome-scale metabolic model of the whitefly bacterial endosymbiont Candidatus Portiera aleyrodidarum to study the energy production capabilities using stoichiometric analysis. Strikingly, the results suggest that the energetic metabolism of the bacterial endosymbiont relies on the use of pathways related to the synthesis of amino acids and carotenoids. A deeper insight showed that the ATP production via carotenoid synthesis may also have a potential role in the regulation of amino acid production. The coupling of energy production to anabolism suggest that minimization of metabolic networks as a consequence of genome size reduction does not necessarily limit the biosynthetic potential of obligate endosymbionts.