Su Qi, Xie Wen, Wang Shaoli, Wu Qingjun, Liu Baiming, Fang Yong, Xu Baoyun, Zhang Youjun
College of Plant Protection, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China ; Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
PLoS One. 2014 Feb 18;9(2):e89002. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089002. eCollection 2014.
The whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) harbors several bacterial symbionts. Among the secondary (facultative) symbionts, Hamiltonella has high prevalence and high infection frequencies, suggesting that it may be important for the biology and ecology of its hosts. Previous reports indicated that Hamiltonella increases whitefly fitness and, based on the complete sequencing of its genome, may have the ability to synthesize cofactors and amino acids that are required by its host but that are not sufficiently synthesized by the host or by the primary endosymbiont, Portiera. Here, we assessed the effects of Hamiltonella infection on the growth of B. tabaci reared on low-, standard-, or high-nitrogen diets. When B. tabaci was reared on a standard-nitrogen diet, no cost or benefit was associated with Hamiltonella infection. But, if we reared whiteflies on low-nitrogen diets, Hamiltonella-infected whiteflies often grew better than uninfected whiteflies. Furthermore, nitrogen levels in field-collected whiteflies indicated that the nutritional conditions in the field were comparable to the low-nitrogen diet in our laboratory experiment. These data suggest that Hamiltonella may play a previously unrecognized role as a nutritional mutualist in B. tabaci.
烟粉虱Bemisia tabaci（Gennadius）（半翅目：粉虱科）携带多种细菌共生体。在次生（兼性）共生体中，汉密尔顿ella的流行率和感染频率都很高，这表明它可能对其宿主的生物学和生态学具有重要意义。先前的报告表明，汉密尔顿ella提高了粉虱的适应性，并且基于其基因组的完整测序，它可能具有合成宿主所需但宿主或主要内共生体Portiera合成不足的辅因子和氨基酸的能力。在这里，我们评估了汉密尔顿ella感染对以低氮、标准氮或高氮饮食饲养的烟粉虱生长的影响。当烟粉虱以标准氮饮食饲养时，汉密尔顿ella感染没有带来成本或益处。但是，如果我们以低氮饮食饲养粉虱，感染汉密尔顿ella的粉虱通常比未感染的粉虱生长得更好。此外，田间采集的粉虱中的氮水平表明，田间的营养条件与我们实验室实验中的低氮饮食相当。这些数据表明，汉密尔顿ella可能在烟粉虱中作为营养共生体发挥了以前未被认识到的作用。
