Evolution-guided mutagenesis of the cytoplasmic incompatibility proteins: Identifying CifA's complex functional repertoire and new essential regions in CifB.

ABSTRACT: Wolbachia are the world's most common, maternally-inherited, arthropod endosymbionts. Their worldwide distribution is due, in part, to a selfish drive system termed cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) that confers a relative fitness advantage to females that transmit Wolbachia to their offspring. CI results in embryonic death when infected males mate with uninfected females but not infected females. Under the Two-by-One genetic model of CI, males expressing the two phage WO proteins CifA and CifB cause CI, and females expressing CifA rescue CI. While each protein is predicted to harbor three functional domains, there is no knowledge on how sites across these Cif domains, rather than in any one particular domain, contribute to CI and rescue. Here, we use evolution-guided, substitution mutagene

SUBMITTER: Shropshire JD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7458348 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature