To understand symbiotic phenomena broadly, we have selected two very different study systems for the following rationale:

Marine bivalve-gammaproteobacterial chemosynthetic mutualisms

• Tractable experimental marine symbiosis
• Accessible populations for next-gen short and long read sequencing
• Results are broadly applicable across these ancient associations

Fruit fly- Wolbachia manipulative symbioses

• Powerful model organism with established tools and protocols
• Symbiont-host co-cell culture
• High quality symbiont and host nuclear genomes available
• Bacterial mechanisms for host manipulation can be applied to insect disease vector control