Diversity, lifestyle and evolution of the phylum Dependentiae in their associated protist hosts – DEPEND

Most bacterial taxa are yet-to-be cultivated, thus forming the ‘Microbial Dark Matter’ (MDM), a consortium whose ecology and biology remain largely unexplored. The Dependentiae are a major MDM phylum, found worldwide in various environments. Genomic evidence suggests an ancestral and unusual adaptation of all Dependentiae to a host dependent lifestyle with protists. However, the Dependentiae still remain to this day a poorly documented phylum. Thus, the Dependentiae stands as a model for investigating MDM, which the present project proposes to study for furthering the knowledge on such elusive bacteria. To this aim, 3 work packages will be developed, focusing on Dependentiae for characterizing: 1) Their host spectrum and environmental tropism 2) Their lifecycle (from selected isolated) using systems biology 3) Their genomic evolutionary history and processes in adaptation to their hosts.