Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, 97403USA.
Presidential Initiative in Data Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, 97403USA.
G3 (Bethesda). 2023 May 2;13(5). doi: 10.1093/g3journal/jkad047.
Wolbachia is a maternally transmitted endosymbiotic bacteria that infects a wide variety of arthropod and nematode hosts. The effects of Wolbachia on host biology are far-reaching and include changes in host gene expression. However, previous work on the host transcriptional response has generally been investigated in the context of a single host genotype. Thus, the relative effect of Wolbachia infection versus vs. host genotype on gene expression is unknown. Here, we explicitly test the relative roles of Wolbachia infection and host genotype on host gene expression by comparing the ovarian transcriptomes of 4 strains of Drosophila melanogaster (D. melanogaster) infected and uninfected with Wolbachia. Our data suggest that infection explains a small amount of transcriptional variation, particularly in comparison to variation in gene expression among strains. However, infection specifically affects genes related to cell cycle, translation, and metabolism. We also find enrichment of cell division and recombination processes among genes with infection-associated differential expression. Broadly, the transcriptomic changes identified in this study provide novel understanding of the relative magnitude of the effect of Wolbachia infection on gene expression in the context of host genetic variation and also point to genes that are consistently differentially expressed in response to infection among multiple genotypes.
沃尔巴克氏体是一种母系传播的内共生细菌，感染了广泛的节肢动物和线虫宿主。沃尔巴克氏体对宿主生物学的影响是深远的，包括宿主基因表达的改变。然而，以前关于宿主转录组响应的研究通常是在单个宿主基因型的背景下进行的。因此，沃尔巴克氏体感染与宿主基因型对基因表达的相对影响尚不清楚。在这里，我们通过比较感染和未感染沃尔巴克氏体的 4 株黑腹果蝇（Drosophila melanogaster）的卵巢转录组，明确测试了沃尔巴克氏体感染和宿主基因型对宿主基因表达的相对作用。我们的数据表明，感染解释了少量的转录变异，特别是与菌株间基因表达的变异相比。然而，感染特异性地影响与细胞周期、翻译和代谢相关的基因。我们还发现，在与感染相关的差异表达基因中，细胞分裂和重组过程富集。总的来说，本研究中确定的转录组变化为在宿主遗传变异的背景下，沃尔巴克氏体感染对基因表达的影响的相对幅度提供了新的认识，并且还指出了在多个基因型中对感染有一致差异表达的基因。
