New paper in The ISME Journal: Evidence for motility of marine chlamydiae

Chlamydia are generally characterized by a highly conserved intracellular life style. Astrid Collingro and Matthias Horn together with an international team have now discovered a surprising divergence from this lifestyle in marine chlamydiae. Using single-cell genomics, they detected nearly complete gene sets for flagella and chemotaxis, suggesting that these marine chlamydiae are motile. This represents a yet underestimated potential of chlamydiae to adapt to different hosts and environments.