Buchnera aphidicola Raw sequence reads
Buchnera aphidicola is a nutritional endosymbiont of aphids, providing essential amino acids and vitamins missing in the host diet. The B. aphidicola genome has undergone extensive genome decay due to genetic drift, which leads to mutational overload; coupled with population bottlenecks, this leads to pseudogenization and eventual large-scale deletions. Previous research has detailed variation in genome size and content between B. aphidicola of different host lineages. Such variation has been speculated to be a result of different selection pressures between host lineages on the B. aphidicola genome. As aphids require B. aphidicola to reach adulthood and reproduce, understanding these different selection pressures increases our understanding of the fate of the aphid/Buchnera symbiosis and how ecological interactions in symbioses can change selective pressures in the host/symbiont system.