Diego C. Franco

The paper presents the smallest bacterial genomes known and evaluates patterns of reductive evolution in planthopper symbionts.

This study uses genome-level data to resolve the phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary history of planthoppers, identifying new taxonomic placements and dating the origin of the group to the Permian period.

The paper introduces a high-throughput quantitative multi-target amplicon sequencing workflow to improve microbial community profiling in wild insects, addressing contamination and identification issues.

The paper sequenced and analyzed the genomes of two endosymbiotic bacteria in planthoppers, revealing independent evolutionary origins and genomic rearrangements that challenge previous assumptions about their shared ancestry.