For bugs within bugs within mealybugs, life is a 'patchwork'

Bacteria may have bad reputations but in fact, all animals -- us included -- rely on them in critical ways. In the case of sap-feeding insects, intimate associations with microbes offer a source for essential nutrients that their sugary diets just don't include. Now, researchers reporting in the August 11th Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have new insight into organisms that have taken this symbiotic lifestyle to the extreme; they have sequenced the genomes of two species of bacteria that live together, one inside of the other, inside mealybugs.

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