Abstract: Insect symbionts can be classified into obligate and secondary facultative symbionts. The primary symbionts are nutritional symbionts which reside within a specialized organ, the bacteriome. These primary symbionts (like Wigglesworthia, Buchnera etc) produce important nutrients, mainly amino acids and vitamins, to their diet-dependent hosts such as aphids, tsetse flies, ants, stinkbugs, weevils, psyllids, lice and sharpshooters. The secondary facultative symbionts can be detected in diverse cell types and organs. These symbionts can be beneficial to their hosts by providing protection against heat, parasitoids, viruses and insecticide resistance. Gut-associated bacteria are members of this category and recent studies increasingly suggest their importance in several aspects of insect host biology and physiology including nutrition, immunity and behavior. The insect gut microbiota can also engage in opportunistically harmful interactions with the host. During the last years, and with the advent of molecular biology and next generation sequencing techniques, research on symbiosis has been rekindled with an emphasis on untangling the diversity and the functional role symbionts have on all aspects of host biology.

Bio: Assoc. Prof. George Tsiamis teaches Microbiology, Molecular Biology, and Biotechnology at the University of Patras in the Department of Environmental Engineering. He has a 17-year of research experience in environmental microbiology. He has more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in international journals, with an h-index of 27, and more than 4,000 citations. He has participated in several FP6, FP7, Horizon EU projects and national projects. He is the Head of the Lab of Systems Microbiology and Applied Genomics.