Diego Santos-Garcia

This study sequenced and analyzed Arsenophanus genomes from whiteflies to determine their role in B-vitamin synthesis, finding they contribute to host nutrition despite genomic divergence.

The paper models metabolic interactions among bacterial symbionts in whiteflies to understand their dependencies and exchanges in a host-simulated environment.

The paper constructs a genome-scale metabolic model of the whitefly endosymbiont to show that its energy production is linked to amino acid and carotenoid synthesis, challenging the idea that genome reduction limits biosynthetic potential.