TY - JOUR
T1 - Within host selection for faster replicating bacterial symbionts
AU - Chrostek, Ewa
AU - Teixeira, Luis
N1 - Funding Information:
LT’s lab is funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (www.fct.pt) grant PTDC/BEX-GMG/3128/2014. EC is supported by EMBO Long Term Fellowship EMBO ALTF 1497-2015 (http://www.embo.org), co-funded by Marie Curie Actions by the European Commission (LTFCOFUND2013, GA-2013-609409) (ec.europa.eu/research/ mariecurieactions). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We thank Tiago Marques for advice on the statistical analysis.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Chrostek, Teixeira. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - Wolbachia is a widespread, intracellular symbiont of arthropods, able to induce reproductive distortions and antiviral protection in insects. Wolbachia can also be pathogenic, as is the case with wMelPop, a virulent variant of the endosymbiont of Drosophila melanogaster. An extensive genomic amplification of the 20kb region encompassing eight Wolbachia genes, called Octomom, is responsible for wMelPop virulence. The Octomom copy number in wMelPop can be highly variable between individual D. melanogaster flies, even when comparing siblings arising from a single female. Moreover, Octomom copy number can change rapidly between generations. These data suggest an intra-host variability in Octomom copy number between Wolbachia cells. Since wMelPop Wolbachia with different Octomom copy numbers grow at different rates, we hypothesized that selection could act on this intra-host variability. Here we tested if total Octomom copy number changes during the lifespan of individual Drosophila hosts, revealing selection for different Wolbachia populations. We performed a time course analysis of Octomom amplification in flies whose mothers were controlled for Octomom copy number. We show that despite the Octomom copy number being relatively stable it increases slightly throughout D. melanogaster adult life. This indicates that there is selection acting on the intra-host variation in the Octomom copy number over the lifespan of individual hosts. This within host selection for faster replicating bacterial symbionts may be in conflict with between host selection against highly pathogenic Wolbachia.
AB - Wolbachia is a widespread, intracellular symbiont of arthropods, able to induce reproductive distortions and antiviral protection in insects. Wolbachia can also be pathogenic, as is the case with wMelPop, a virulent variant of the endosymbiont of Drosophila melanogaster. An extensive genomic amplification of the 20kb region encompassing eight Wolbachia genes, called Octomom, is responsible for wMelPop virulence. The Octomom copy number in wMelPop can be highly variable between individual D. melanogaster flies, even when comparing siblings arising from a single female. Moreover, Octomom copy number can change rapidly between generations. These data suggest an intra-host variability in Octomom copy number between Wolbachia cells. Since wMelPop Wolbachia with different Octomom copy numbers grow at different rates, we hypothesized that selection could act on this intra-host variability. Here we tested if total Octomom copy number changes during the lifespan of individual Drosophila hosts, revealing selection for different Wolbachia populations. We performed a time course analysis of Octomom amplification in flies whose mothers were controlled for Octomom copy number. We show that despite the Octomom copy number being relatively stable it increases slightly throughout D. melanogaster adult life. This indicates that there is selection acting on the intra-host variation in the Octomom copy number over the lifespan of individual hosts. This within host selection for faster replicating bacterial symbionts may be in conflict with between host selection against highly pathogenic Wolbachia.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85040787836&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0191530
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0191530
M3 - Article
C2 - 29346449
AN - SCOPUS:85040787836
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 13
JO - PLoS one
JF - PLoS one
IS - 1
M1 - e0191530
ER -