Chrostek Ewa, Marialva Marta S P, Yamada Ryuichi, O'Neill Scott L, Teixeira Luis
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal.
Department of Metabolism and Aging, The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, Florida, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2014 Jun 9;9(6):e99025. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0099025. eCollection 2014.
Wolbachia, endosymbionts that reside naturally in up to 40-70% of all insect species, are some of the most prevalent intracellular bacteria. Both Wolbachia wAu, naturally associated with Drosophila simulans, and wMel, native to Drosophila melanogaster, have been previously described to protect their hosts against viral infections. wMel transferred to D. simulans was also shown to have a strong antiviral effect. Here we directly compare one of the most protective wMel variants and wAu in D. melanogaster in the same host genetic background. We conclude that wAu protects better against viral infections, it grows exponentially and significantly shortens the lifespan of D. melanogaster. However, there is no difference between wMel and wAu in the expression of selected antimicrobial peptides. Therefore, neither the difference in anti-viral effect nor the life-shortening could be attributed to the immune stimulation by exogenous Wolbachia. Overall, we prove that stable transinfection with a highly protective Wolbachia is not necessarily associated with general immune activation.
沃尔巴克氏体是一类存在于高达40%-70%的昆虫物种中的内共生菌，是最为常见的细胞内细菌之一。与拟暗果蝇自然共生的沃巴赫氏体wAu和原产于黑腹果蝇的wMel，此前均被描述为可保护宿主免受病毒感染。转移至拟暗果蝇的wMel也显示出强大的抗病毒作用。在此，我们在相同的宿主遗传背景下，直接比较了黑腹果蝇中最具保护作用的wMel变体之一和wAu。我们得出结论，wAu对病毒感染的保护作用更强，它呈指数增长并显著缩短黑腹果蝇的寿命。然而，wMel和wAu在所选抗菌肽的表达上并无差异。因此，抗病毒效果的差异和寿命缩短都不能归因于外源沃尔巴克氏体的免疫刺激。总体而言，我们证明，用具有高度保护作用的沃尔巴克氏体进行稳定的转染感染不一定与全身免疫激活相关。
