A weird cousin of the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease has learned to survive without oxygen by literally hijacking its host's skeleton for energy.
April 13, 2026
Original Paper
An anaerobic Legionellales symbiont in Anaeramoeba pumila
bioRxiv · 10.64898/2026.04.11.717937
The Takeaway
These bacteria performed a rare evolutionary pivot, switching from air-breathing pathogens to oxygen-hating roommates. They even stole genes from their hosts to manipulate the cell's internal structure for their own survival.
From the abstract
Anaeramoeba pumila is a free-living anaerobic amoeba and the smallest known member of the Anaeramoebae, a phylum characterized by elaborate membrane-bound symbiosomes housing sulfate-reducing bacterial symbionts. Here, we report a draft nuclear genome assembly of A. pumila LANTAAN and describe the discovery, genomic characterization, and metabolic reconstruction of Candidatus Centrionella anaeramoebae gen. nov., sp. nov., an obligate intracellular symbiont of A. pumila belonging to the order Leg