Abstract
Wolbachia pipientis (Rickettsiales), an obligate intracellular alphaproteobacterium in insects, manipulates host reproduction to maximize invasion of uninfected insect populations. Modification of host population structure has potential applications for control of pest species, particularly if Wolbachia can be maintained, manipulated, and genetically engineered in vitro. Although Wolbachia maintains an obligate mutualism with genome stability in nematodes, arthropods can be co-infected with distinct Wolbachia strains, and horizontal gene transfer between strains is potentially mediated by WO phages encoded within Wolbachia genomes. Proteomic analysis of a robust, persistent infection of a mosquito cell line with wStr from the planthopper, Laodelphax striatellus, revealed expression of a full array of WO phage genes, as well as nine of ten non-phage genes that occur between two distinct clusters of WOMelB genes in the genome of wMel, which infects Drosophila melanogaster. These non-phage genes encode potential host-adaptive proteins and are expressed in wStr at higher levels than phage structural proteins. A subset of seven of the non-phage genes is flanked by highly conserved non-coding sequences, including a putative promoter element, that are not present in a syntenically arranged array of homologs in plasmids from three tick-associated Rickettsia spp. These studies expand our understanding of wStr in a host cell line derived from the mosquito, Aedes albopictus, and provide a basis for investigating conditions that favor the lytic phase of the WO phage life cycle and recovery of infectious phage particles.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11626-015-9949-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Wolbachia (Anaplasmataceae; Rickettsiales) is an obligate intracellular alpha proteobacterium that engages in distinctive interactions with invertebrate hosts, depending on whether they are nematodes or arthropods
The genomes of nematode-associated Wolbachia supergroup C- and Dstrains coevolve with their host genomes and lack mobile genetic elements that are abundant in strains from the arthropod-associated supergroups A and B, hereafter designated as WOL-A and WOL-B (Wu et al 2004; Cordaux et al 2008; Ishmael et al 2009; Newton and Bordenstein 2011)
We identified 39 WO phage proteins, some of which were mosaic in the sense that they were represented by peptides corresponding to homologs from distinct Wolbachia genomes
Summary
Wolbachia (Anaplasmataceae; Rickettsiales) is an obligate intracellular alpha proteobacterium that engages in distinctive interactions with invertebrate hosts, depending on whether they are nematodes or arthropods. The genomes of nematode-associated Wolbachia supergroup C- and Dstrains coevolve with their host genomes and lack mobile genetic elements that are abundant in strains from the arthropod-associated supergroups A and B, hereafter designated as WOL-A and WOL-B (Wu et al 2004; Cordaux et al 2008; Ishmael et al 2009; Newton and Bordenstein 2011). Mosaic gene sequences, a lack of phylogenetic congruence between Wolbachia strains and arthropod hosts, and the presence of mobile genetic elements in Wolbachia genomes. Arthropod-associated Wolbachia genomes typically contain one or more WO prophages consisting of a complete set of genes with a modular organization and encoding head, baseplate, tail, and all other proteins required for the lytic cycle and packaging of a potentially infectious phage (Kent et al 2011). Genome reduction in Wolbachia may target prophage sequences, as has been suggested for AwRec from Drosophila recens (Metcalf et al 2014)
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