Influence of Wolbachia on host gene expression in an obligatory symbiosis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Wolbachia are intracellular bacteria known to be facultative reproductive parasites of numerous arthropod hosts. Apart from these reproductive manipulations, recent findings indicate that Wolbachia may also modify the host's physiology, notably its immune function. In the parasitoid wasp, Asobara tabida, Wolbachia is necessary for oogenesis completion, and aposymbiotic females are unable to produce viable offspring. The absence of egg production is also associated with an increase in programmed cell death in the ovaries of aposymbiotic females, suggesting that a mechanism that ensures the maintenance of Wolbachia in the wasp could also be responsible for this dependence. In order to decipher the general mechanisms underlying host-Wolbachia interactions and the origin of

SUBMITTER: Kremer N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3287518 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature