Enclosed is our most recent work carried out in collaboration with researchers from Institut Cabanilles in Valencia. We demonstrate that Blattabacterium cuenoti, a primary endosymbiont bacteroid of cockroaches, crucially participates in the nitrogen cycle of the host, affording the urease enzyme. We identified the transcripts corresponding to genes involved in the synthesis of uric acid and its catabolism to urea, and those genes necessary to synthesize the aminoacids required by the endosymbiont. The entire metabolic cycle is shared by the cockroach and its endosymbiont, in an elegant example of interdependent genomes. It appears that the ability to use uric acid as a nitrogen reservoir in cockroaches emerged after its age-old symbiotic association with bacteroids. 

Reference Article: Patiño-Navarrete R, Piulachs M-D, Belles X, Moya A, Latorre A, Peretó J. The cockroach Blattella germanica obtains nitrogen from uric acid through a metabolic pathway shared with its bacterial endosymbiont. 2014. Biology Letters 10(7). d oi:10.1098/rsbl.2014.0407

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