The extent and biological relevance of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in eukaryotic evolution remain highly controversial. Recent studies have demonstrated frequent and large-scale HGT from endosymbiotic bacteria to their hosts, but the great majority of these transferred genes rapidly become nonfunctional in the recipient genome. Here, we investigate an ancient HGT between a host metazoan and ...

The oxidative homeostasis is the balance between reactive oxygen species and antioxidant molecules. In addition to be considered as a key factor underlying life-history traits evolution, the oxidative homeostasis has been shown to be involved in many host-symbiont associations. Previous studies suggest an interaction between the bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia and the oxidative homeostasis of ...

Male killing, induced by different bacterial taxa of maternally inherited microorganisms, resulting in highly distorted female-biased sex-ratios, is a common phenomenon among arthropods. Some strains of the endosymbiont bacteria Wolbachia have been shown to induce this phenotype in particular insect hosts. High altitude populations of Drosophila bifasciata infected with Wolbachia show selective...

1249 Arbovirus inhibition phenotype Arboviruses transmitted by mosquitoes have great importance in global health, owing to increasing ranges and impact and often with no effective vaccines or reliable prophylactics available. The most important is the flavivirus dengue virus (DENV), which occurs in 100 countries and causes tens of millions of cases of dengue fever annually, approximately half a...

The bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia manipulates arthropod reproduction to facilitate its maternal spread through host populations. The most common manipulation is cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI): Wolbachia-infected males produce modified sperm that cause embryonic mortality, unless rescued by embryos harboring the same Wolbachia. The genes underlying CI, cifA and cifB, were recently identifie...

Wolbachia are maternally inherited intracellular bacteria that infect a wide range of arthropods and cause an array of effects on host reproduction, fitness and mating behavior. Although our understanding of the Wolbachia-associated effects on hosts is rapidly expanding, our knowledge of the host factors that mediate Wolbachia dynamics is rudimentary. Here, we explore the interactions between W...

Cydia splendana and C. fagiglandana are two closely related chestnut feeding lepidopteran moth species. In this study, we surveyed the bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia in these two species. Infection rates were 31% in C. splendana and 77% in C. fagiglandana. MLST analysis showed that these two species are infected with two quite diverse Wolbachia strains. C. splendana with Sequence Type (ST) 40...

Wolbachia are widespread maternally transmitted intracellular bacteria that infect most insect species and are able to alter the reproduction of innumerous hosts. The cellular bases of these alterations remain largely unknown. Here, we report that Drosophila mauritiana infected with a native Wolbachia wMau strain produces about four times more eggs than the noninfected counterpart. Wolbachia in...

Vertically transmitted endosymbiotic bacteria, such as Wolbachia, Cardinium and Rickettsia, modify host reproduction in several ways to facilitate their own spread. One such modification results in parthenogenesis induction, where males, which are unable to transmit the bacteria, are not produced. In Hymenoptera, the mechanism of diploidization due to Wolbachia infection, known as gamete duplic...