Feminizing Wolbachia endosymbiont disrupts maternal sex chromosome inheritance in a butterfly species.

ABSTRACT: Wolbachia is a maternally inherited ubiquitous endosymbiotic bacterium of arthropods that displays a diverse repertoire of host reproductive manipulations. For the first time, we demonstrate that Wolbachia manipulates sex chromosome inheritance in a sexually reproducing insect. Eurema mandarina butterfly females on Tanegashima Island, Japan, are infected with the wFem Wolbachia strain and produce all-female offspring, while antibiotic treatment results in male offspring. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) revealed that wFem-positive and wFem-negative females have Z0 and WZ sex chromosome sets, respectively, demonstrating the predicted absence of the W chromosome in wFem-infected lineages. Genomic quantitative polymerase chain r

SUBMITTER: Kageyama D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6121850 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature