SYMBIO-SCAN, a full-length 16S rRNA gene-based workflow optimized for bacterial symbiont detection and discovery from long read sequencing

SYMBIO-SCAN recovered 80 high-quality nearly full-length 16S rRNA gene sequences from 30 beetle specimens, enabling discriminatory identification and accurate phylogenetic analyses.

• Why it matters: Unculturable bacterial endosymbionts are hard to discover and characterize, so sequencing workflows with sufficient resolution are needed to reveal their diversity and evolutionary relationships.
• What they did: After validation on a mock community, the workflow was applied to 30 beetle (Coleoptera) specimens from 10 species using long-read 16S rRNA gene recovery and tailored bioinformatic analyses.
• The result: The approach detected mostly Rickettsiales and Enterobacterales, frequently including Wolbachia, Rickettsia, “Candidatus Lariskella,” Arsenophonus, and Spiroplasma, and it identified three putative novel genera and one additional putative novel species.

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