Marine protists abound, but are challenging to study, and their interactions with other microbes in nature remain largely unknown. We captured wild predatory protists (choanoflagellates) and discovered a divergent, obligately co-associated bacterial group that lives by extracting resources from these predators.
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References
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This is a summary of: Needham, D. M. et al. The microbiome of a bacterivorous marine choanoflagellate contains a resource-demanding obligate bacterial associate. Nat. Microbiol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01174-0 (2022).
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A divergent bacterium lives in association with bacterivorous protists in the ocean. Nat Microbiol 7, 1335–1336 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01199-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01199-5
