Diceroprocta semicincta and endosymbiont genome sequencing

Cicadas species are globally distributed and are important insects ecologically and economically. Their success depends upon amino acid providing bacteria that are harbored in specialized organs called bacteriomes. These bacteria have among the smallest genomes of any bacteria; how they function at a cellular level with such small genomes is unknown. To address this question, we sequenced the bacterial symbionts harbored by Cicada species from around the world.