| strength of the pathogenicity caused by feminizing wolbachia after transfer in a new host: strain or dose effect? | the alphaproteobacteria wolbachia pipientis are among the most common and widespread symbionts in the animal world. their vertical transmission mode is predicted to favour genotypes with low virulence. on the contrary, horizontal transfers of wolbachia from one host to another have been shown to possibly increase the symbiont virulence. this situation has been previously described when two feminizing wolbachia strains, wvulc and wvulm, from the ovaries of the woodlouse armadillidium vulgare were ... | 2014 | 24345405 |
| the impact of wolbachia, male age and mating history on cytoplasmic incompatibility and sperm transfer in drosophila simulans. | most insects harbour a variety of maternally inherited endosymbionts, the most widespread being wolbachia pipientis that commonly induce cytoplasmic incompatibility (ci) and reduced hatching success in crosses between infected males and uninfected females. high temperature and increasing male age are known to reduce the level of ci in a variety of insects. in drosophila simulans, infected males have been shown to mate at a higher rate than uninfected males. by examining the impact of mating rate ... | 2014 | 24164708 |
| monophyly of wolbachia pipientis genomes within drosophila melanogaster: geographic structuring, titre variation and host effects across five populations. | wolbachia pipientis is one of the most widely studied endosymbionts today, yet we know little about its short-term adaptation and evolution. here, using a set of 91 inbred drosophila melanogaster lines from five populations, we explore patterns of diversity and recent evolution in the wolbachia strain wmel. within the d. melanogaster lines, we identify six major mitochondrial clades and four wmel clades. concordant with past studies, the wolbachia haplotypes contain an overall low level of nucle ... | 2013 | 24118111 |
| horizontal transfers of feminizing versus non-feminizing wolbachia strains: from harmless passengers to pathogens. | the endosymbiont wolbachia pipientis infects various hosts in which it navigates vertically from mothers to offspring. however, horizontal transfers of wolbachia can occur between hosts. the virulence of the horizontally acquired wolbachia can change in the new host as it has been illustrated by the case of the feminizing strain wvulc from the woodlouse armadillidium vulgare that turns to a pathogen when introduced into porcellio dilatatus dilatatus. in the present study, we aim to show whether ... | 2013 | 23802876 |
| operational use of household bleach to "crash and release" aedes aegypti prior to wolbachia-infected mosquito release. | dengue (family flaviviridae, genus flavivirus, denv) remains the leading arboviral cause of mortality in the tropics. wolbachia pipientis has been shown to interrupt denv transmission and is presently being trialled as a biological control. however, deployment issues have arisen on methods to temporarily suppress wild mosquito populations before wolbachia-infected mosquito releases. by suppressing wild populations, fewer ae. aegypti releases are required to achieve a sustainable wolbachia densit ... | 2013 | 23540123 |
| wolbachia association with the tsetse fly, glossina fuscipes fuscipes, reveals high levels of genetic diversity and complex evolutionary dynamics. | wolbachia pipientis, a diverse group of α-proteobacteria, can alter arthropod host reproduction and confer a reproductive advantage to wolbachia-infected females (cytoplasmic incompatibility (ci)). this advantage can alter host population genetics because wolbachia-infected females produce more offspring with their own mitochondrial dna (mtdna) haplotypes than uninfected females. thus, these host haplotypes become common or fixed (selective sweep). although simulations suggest that for a ci-medi ... | 2013 | 23384159 |
| wolbachia filarial interactions. | wolbachia pipientis is a widespread intracellular bacterial symbiont of arthropods and is common in insects. one of their more exotic and unexpected hosts is the filarial nematodes, notable for the parasites responsible for onchocerciasis (river blindness), lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) and dirofilariasis (heartworm). wolbachia are only present in a subgroup of the filarial nematodes and do not extend to other groups of nematodes either parasitic or free-living. in the medically and veter ... | 2013 | 23210448 |
| male mating performance and cytoplasmic incompatibility in a wpip wolbachia trans-infected line of aedes albopictus (stegomyia albopicta). | wolbachia pipientis hertig (rickettsiales: rickettsiaceae) is a maternally inherited endosymbiont of a large number of insects and other arthropods that induces various effects on host reproductive biology. among these, cytoplasmic incompatibility (ci) is a form of sterility induced in eggs produced by mating between infected males and females uninfected or infected by an incompatible wolbachia strain. this phenomenon has been proposed as a potential way to produce functionally sterile males to ... | 2013 | 23171418 |
| infection, growth and maintenance of wolbachia pipientis in clonal and non-clonal aedes albopictus cell cultures. | insect cell lines provide useful in vitro models for studying biological systems, including interactions between mosquitoes and obligate intracellular endosymbionts such as wolbachia pipientis. the aedes albopictus aa23 cell line was the first cell line developed to allow examination of wolbachia infections. however, wolbachia studies using aa23 can be complicated by the presence of different cell types in the cell line and the substantial temporal variation in infection level. two approaches we ... | 2013 | 23113940 |
| disruption of redox homeostasis leads to oxidative dna damage in spermatocytes of wolbachia-infected drosophila simulans. | molecular interactions between symbiotic bacteria and their animal hosts are, as yet, poorly understood. the most widespread bacterial endosymbiont, wolbachia pipientis, occurs in high density in testes of infected drosophila simulans and causes cytoplasmic incompatibility (ci), a form of male-derived zygotic lethality. wolbachia grow and divide within host vacuoles that generate reactive oxygen species (ros), which in turn stimulate the up-regulation of antioxidant enzymes. these enzymes appear ... | 2012 | 22831171 |
| infection with wolbachia protects mosquitoes against plasmodium-induced mortality in a natural system. | in recent years, there has been a shift in the one host-one parasite paradigm with the realization that, in the field, most hosts are coinfected with multiple parasites. coinfections are particularly relevant when the host is a vector of diseases, because multiple infections can have drastic consequences for parasite transmission at both the ecological and evolutionary timescales. wolbachia pipientis is the most common parasitic microorganism in insects, and as such, it is of special interest fo ... | 2012 | 22533729 |
| tandem repeat markers as novel diagnostic tools for high resolution fingerprinting of wolbachia. | strains of the endosymbiotic bacterium wolbachia pipientis are extremely diverse both genotypically and in terms of their induced phenotypes in invertebrate hosts. despite extensive molecular characterisation of wolbachia diversity, little is known about the actual genomic diversity within or between closely related strains that group tightly on the basis of existing gene marker systems, including multiple locus sequence typing (mlst). there is an urgent need for higher resolution fingerprinting ... | 2012 | 22375862 |
| enzymatic activity necessary to restore the lethality due to escherichia coli rnase e deficiency is distributed among bacteria lacking rnase e homologues. | escherichia coli rnase e (eco-rnase e), encoded by rne (eco-rne), is considered the global rna decay initiator. although eco-rnase e is an essential gene product in e. coli, some bacterial species, such as bacillus subtilis, do not possess eco-rnase e sequence homologues. b. subtilis instead possesses rnase j1/j2 (bsu-rnase j1/j2) and rnase y (bsu-rnase y) to execute rna decay. here we found that e. coli lacking the eco-rne gene (δrne e. coli) was viable conditional on m9 minimal media by introd ... | 2017 | 28542621 |
| wolbachia-mediated virus blocking in the mosquito vector aedes aegypti. | viruses transmitted by mosquitoes such as dengue, zika and west nile cause a threat to global health due to increased geographical range and frequency of outbreaks. the bacterium wolbachia pipientis may be the solution reducing disease transmission. though commonly missing in vector species, the bacterium was artificially and stably introduced into aedes aegypti to assess its potential for biocontrol. when infected with wolbachia, mosquitoes become refractory to infection by a range of pathogens ... | 2017 | 28805637 |
| wolbachia and dengue virus infection in the mosquito aedes fluviatilis (diptera: culicidae). | dengue represents a serious threat to human health, with billions of people living at risk of the disease. wolbachia pipientis is a bacterial endosymbiont common to many insect species. wolbachia transinfections in mosquito disease vectors have great value for disease control given the bacterium's ability to spread into wild mosquito populations, and to interfere with infections of pathogens, such as dengue virus. aedes fluviatilis is a mosquito with a widespread distribution in latin america, b ... | 2017 | 28732048 |
| wolbachia elevates host methyltransferase expression to block an rna virus early during infection. | wolbachia pipientis is an intracellular endosymbiont known to confer host resistance against rna viruses in insects. however, the causal mechanism underlying this antiviral defense remains poorly understood. to this end, we have established a robust arthropod model system to study the tripartite interaction involving sindbis virus and wolbachia strain wmel within its native host, drosophila melanogaster. by leveraging the power of drosophila genetics and a parallel, highly tractable d. melanogas ... | 2017 | 28617844 |
| large-scale identification of wolbachia pipientis effectors. | wolbachia pipientis is an intracellular symbiont of arthropods well known for the reproductive manipulations induced in the host and, more recently, for the ability of wolbachia to block virus replication in insect vectors. since wolbachia cannot yet be genetically manipulated, and due to the constraints imposed when working with an intracellular symbiont, little is known about mechanisms used by wolbachia for host interaction. here we employed a bioinformatics pipeline and identified 163 candid ... | 2017 | 28854601 |
| artificial acceleration of mammalian cell reprogramming by bacterial proteins. | the molecular mechanisms of cell reprogramming and differentiation involve various signaling factors. small molecule compounds have been identified to artificially influence these factors through interacting cellular proteins. although such small molecule compounds are useful to enhance reprogramming and differentiation and to show the mechanisms that underlie these events, the screening usually requires a large number of compounds to identify only a very small number of hits (e.g., one hit amon ... | 2017 | 28776863 |
| wolbachia in the genus bicyclus: a forgotten player. | bicyclus butterflies are key species for studies of wing pattern development, phenotypic plasticity, speciation and the genetics of lepidoptera. one of the key endosymbionts in butterflies, the alpha-proteobacterium wolbachia pipientis, is affecting many of these biological processes; however, bicyclus butterflies have not been investigated systematically as hosts to wolbachia. in this study, we screen for wolbachia infection in several bicyclus species from natural populations across africa as ... | 2017 | 28702705 |
| cytonuclear epistasis controls the density of symbiont wolbachia pipientis in nongonadal tissues of mosquito culex quinquefasciatus. | wolbachia pipientis, a bacterial symbiont infecting arthropods and nematodes, is vertically transmitted through the female germline and manipulates its host's reproduction to favor infected females. wolbachia also infects somatic tissues where it can cause nonreproductive phenotypes in its host, including resistance to viral pathogens. wolbachia-mediated phenotypes are strongly associated with the density of wolbachia in host tissues. little is known, however, about how wolbachia density is regu ... | 2017 | 28606944 |
| variable inhibition of zika virus replication by different wolbachia strains in mosquito cell cultures. | mosquito-borne arboviruses are a major source of human disease. one strategy to reduce arbovirus disease is to reduce the mosquito's ability to transmit virus. mosquito infection with the bacterial endosymbiont wolbachia pipientis wmel is a novel strategy to reduce aedes mosquito competency for flavivirus infection. however, experiments investigating cyclic environmental temperatures have shown a reduction in maternal transmission of wmel, potentially weakening the integration of this strain int ... | 2017 | 28446677 |
| proteomic analysis of a mosquito host cell response to persistent wolbachia infection. | wolbachia pipientis, an obligate intracellular bacterium associated with arthropods and filarial worms, is a target for filarial disease treatment and provides a gene drive agent for insect vector population suppression/replacement. we compared proteomes of aedes albopictus mosquito c/wstr1 cells persistently infected with wolbachia strain wstr, relative to uninfected c7-10 control cells. among approximately 2500 proteins, itraq data identified 815 differentially abundant proteins. as functional ... | 2017 | 28435138 |
| life-history adaptation and reproductive isolation in a grasshopper hybrid zone. | patterns of life-history adaptation and reproductive isolation were investigated in the acridid grasshoppers melanoplus sanguinipes and m. devastator, which hybridize along an altitudinal gradient in the sierra nevada of california. melanoplus sanguinipes females crossed with m. devastator males produced eggs that were approximately half as viable as eggs from other crosses. diminished viability was not attributable either to infection by wolbachia pipientis or to failure of sperm transfer. when ... | 1996 | 28568927 |
| evolution of incompatibility-inducing microbes and their hosts. | in many insect species, males infected with microbes related to wolbachia pipientis are "incompatible" with uninfected females. crosses between infected males and uninfected females produce significantly fewer adult progeny than the other three possible crosses. the incompatibility-inducing microbes are usually maternally transmitted. thus, incompatibility tends to confer a reproductive advantage on infected females in polymorphic populations, allowing these infections to spread. this paper anal ... | 1994 | 28568404 |
| molecular detection of wolbachia pipientis in natural populations of sandfly vectors of leishmania infantum in endemic areas: first detection in lutzomyia longipalpis. | a polymerase chain reaction-based method was used to screen sandflies for infection with wolbachia (rickettsiales: rickettsiaceae), an intracellular bacterial endosymbiont found in many arthropods and filarial hosts. positive results were obtained in five of 200 field-collected sandflies and were confirmed by sequencing. all sandflies were lutzomyia longipalpis (diptera: psychodidae) captured in a region endemic for visceral leishmaniasis in brazil. this is the first study to identify wolbachia ... | 2017 | 28799248 |
| the impact of wolbachia infection on the rate of vertical transmission of dengue virus in brazilian aedes aegypti. | wolbachia pipientis is a common endosymbiotic bacterium of arthropods that strongly inhibits dengue virus (denv) infection and transmission in the primary vector, the mosquito aedes aegypti. for that reason, wolbachia-infected ae. aegypti are currently being released into the field as part of a novel strategy to reduce denv transmission. however, there is evidence that denv can be transmitted vertically from mother to progeny, and this may help the virus persist in nature in the absence of regul ... | 2017 | 28623959 |
| wolbachia infection in aedes aegypti mosquitoes alters blood meal excretion and delays oviposition without affecting trypsin activity. | blood feeding in aedes aegypti is essential for reproduction, but also permits the mosquito to act as a vector for key human pathogens such as the zika and dengue viruses. wolbachia pipientis is an endosymbiotic bacterium that can manipulate the biology of aedes aegypti mosquitoes, making them less competent hosts for many pathogens. yet while wolbachia affects other aspects of host physiology, it is unclear whether it influences physiological processes associated with blood meal digestion. to t ... | 2017 | 28655666 |