Dynamics of Wolbachia pipientis Gene Expression Across the Drosophila melanogaster Life Cycle

摘要: Symbiotic interactions between microbes and their multicellular hosts have manifold biological consequences. To better understand how bacteria maintain symbiotic associations with animal hosts, we analyzed genome-wide gene expression for the endosymbiotic α-proteobacteria Wolbachia pipientis across entire life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster. We found that majority genes are expressed stably D. melanogaster cycle, but 7.8% exhibit robust stage- or sex-specific differences when studied in whole-organism context. Differentially-expressed typically up-regulated after embryogenesis include many bacterial membrane, secretion system, ankyrin repeat-containing proteins. Sex-biased often organized as small operons uncharacterized mainly adult males an age-dependent manner. also systematically investigated levels previously-reported candidate thought to be involved host-microbe interaction, including those WO-A WO-B prophages Octomom region, which has been implicated regulating titer pathogenicity. Our work provides comprehensive insight into developmental dynamics a widespread endosymbiont its natural host context, shows public data harbor rich resources probe functional basis Wolbachia-Drosophila symbiosis annotate transcriptional outputs genome.