Elucidation of the machanism of how Wolbachia accomplishes the male-specific killing

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K14893
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Insect science
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Katsuma Susumu 東京大学, 大学院農学生命科学研究科(農学部), 准教授 (20378863)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ボルバキア / 遺伝子量補償 / 性決定 / 性操作 / 宿主制御 / チョウ目昆虫 / トランスクリプトーム / 共生細菌

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Wolbachia is an endosymbiotic bacterium that infects a wide range of insect species. Infection of Ostrinia furnacalis by Wolbachia causes the production of all-female progeny. In the present study, we performed RNA-seq analysis of Wolbachia-infected and Wolbachia-uninfected Ostrinia embryos and revealed that Wolbachia infection markedly reduces the mRNA level of Masc, a gene that encodes a protein required for both masculinization and dosage compensation. Further bioinformatic analysis elucidated that dosage compensation of Z-linked genes fails in Wolbachia-infected Ostrinia embryos. In addition, injection of Masc cRNA into Wolbachia-infected embryos rescued male progeny. These results show that Wolbachia-induced male-killing is caused by a failure of dosage compensation via repression of the mRNA level of the host masculinizing gene Masc.

Free Research Field

昆虫分子生物学・病理学