Abstract
Wolbachia are maternally inherited endosymbionts that infect nearly half of all arthropod species. Wolbachia manipulate their hosts to maximize their transmission, but they can also provide benefits such as nutrients and resistance against viruses to their hosts. The Wolbachia strain wMel was recently found to increase locomotor activities and possibly trigger cytoplasmic incompatibility in the transinfected fly Drosophilanigrosparsa. Here, we investigated, in females of both D.melanogaster and D.nigrosparsa, the gene expression between animals uninfected and infected with wMel, using RNA sequencing to see if the two Drosophila species respond to the infection in the same or different ways. A total of 2164 orthologous genes were used. The two fly species responded to the infection in different ways. Significant changes shared by the fly species belong to the expression of genes involved in processes such as oxidation–reduction process, iron-ion binding, and voltage-gated potassium-channel activity. We discuss our findings also in the light of how Wolbachia survive within both the native and the novel host.
Highlights
Different gene expression patterns, shown by tools such as quantitative PCR, microarrays, and high-throughput RNA sequencing, reveal how organisms respond to different environments
We aimed to investigate the effects of Wolbachia wMel on gene expression in D. melanogaster, the native host, and D. nigrosparsa, the novel host, to find out whether these two species respond to the infection in the same or in different ways
Our study demonstrated how different Drosophila species respond to the same strain of Wolbachia by analyzing the expression of orthologous genes shared in D. melanogaster and D. nigrosparsa
Summary
Shown by tools such as quantitative PCR, microarrays, and high-throughput RNA sequencing, reveal how organisms respond to different environments. Differential gene expression analysis using RNA sequencing has been widely used to study relationships between hosts and their endosymbionts; examples include dynamics of gene expression across host life cycles[2,3] and endosymbiont influence on host speciation[4]. It is estimated that around half of all arthropod species are infected with Wolbachia[6,7], with their diversity estimated at around 100,000 s trains[8]. Transmitted, these endosymbionts manipulate their host’s reproduction for their benefits in various ways, such as feminization, cytoplasmic incompatibility, malekilling, and parthenogenesis[5].
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