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Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths

BACKGROUND: Wolbachia is one of the most widespread bacteria on Earth. Previous research on Wolbachia-host interactions indicates that the bacterium is typically transferred vertically, from mother to offspring, through the egg cytoplasm. Although horizontal transmission of Wolbachia from one specie...

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Autores principales: Ahmed, Muhammad Z., Breinholt, Jesse W., Kawahara, Akito Y.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4882834/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27233666
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0660-x
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author Ahmed, Muhammad Z.
Breinholt, Jesse W.
Kawahara, Akito Y.
author_facet Ahmed, Muhammad Z.
Breinholt, Jesse W.
Kawahara, Akito Y.
author_sort Ahmed, Muhammad Z.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Wolbachia is one of the most widespread bacteria on Earth. Previous research on Wolbachia-host interactions indicates that the bacterium is typically transferred vertically, from mother to offspring, through the egg cytoplasm. Although horizontal transmission of Wolbachia from one species to another is reported to be common in arthropods, limited direct ecological evidence is available. In this study, we examine horizontal transmission of Wolbachia using a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) strains dataset and used Wolbachia and Lepidoptera genomes to search for evidence for lateral gene transfer (LGT) in Lepidoptera, one of the most diverse cosmopolitan insect orders. We constructed a phylogeny of arthropod-associated MLST Wolbachia strains and calibrated the age of Wolbachia strains associated with lepidopteran species. RESULTS: Our results reveal inter-specific, inter-generic, inter-familial, and inter-ordinal horizontal transmission of Wolbachia strains, without discernible geographic patterns. We found at least seven probable cases of horizontal transmission among 31 species within Lepidoptera and between Lepidoptera and other arthropod hosts. The divergence time analysis revealed that Wolbachia is recently (22.6–4.7 mya, 95 % HPD) introduced in Lepidoptera. Analysis of nine Lepidoptera genomes (Bombyx mori, Danaus plexippus, Heliconius melpomene, Manduca sexta, Melitaea cinxia, Papilio glaucus, P. polytes, P. xuthus and Plutella xylostella) yielded one possible instance of Wolbachia LGT. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide evidence of high incidence of identical and multiple strains of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths, adding Lepidoptera to the growing body of evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia. This study demonstrates interesting dynamics of this remarkable and influential microorganism. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0660-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-48828342016-05-28 Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths Ahmed, Muhammad Z. Breinholt, Jesse W. Kawahara, Akito Y. BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Wolbachia is one of the most widespread bacteria on Earth. Previous research on Wolbachia-host interactions indicates that the bacterium is typically transferred vertically, from mother to offspring, through the egg cytoplasm. Although horizontal transmission of Wolbachia from one species to another is reported to be common in arthropods, limited direct ecological evidence is available. In this study, we examine horizontal transmission of Wolbachia using a multilocus sequence typing (MLST) strains dataset and used Wolbachia and Lepidoptera genomes to search for evidence for lateral gene transfer (LGT) in Lepidoptera, one of the most diverse cosmopolitan insect orders. We constructed a phylogeny of arthropod-associated MLST Wolbachia strains and calibrated the age of Wolbachia strains associated with lepidopteran species. RESULTS: Our results reveal inter-specific, inter-generic, inter-familial, and inter-ordinal horizontal transmission of Wolbachia strains, without discernible geographic patterns. We found at least seven probable cases of horizontal transmission among 31 species within Lepidoptera and between Lepidoptera and other arthropod hosts. The divergence time analysis revealed that Wolbachia is recently (22.6–4.7 mya, 95 % HPD) introduced in Lepidoptera. Analysis of nine Lepidoptera genomes (Bombyx mori, Danaus plexippus, Heliconius melpomene, Manduca sexta, Melitaea cinxia, Papilio glaucus, P. polytes, P. xuthus and Plutella xylostella) yielded one possible instance of Wolbachia LGT. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide evidence of high incidence of identical and multiple strains of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths, adding Lepidoptera to the growing body of evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia. This study demonstrates interesting dynamics of this remarkable and influential microorganism. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0660-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4882834/ /pubmed/27233666 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0660-x Text en © Ahmed et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Ahmed, Muhammad Z.
Breinholt, Jesse W.
Kawahara, Akito Y.
Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths
title Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths
title_full Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths
title_fullStr Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths
title_full_unstemmed Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths
title_short Evidence for common horizontal transmission of Wolbachia among butterflies and moths
title_sort evidence for common horizontal transmission of wolbachia among butterflies and moths
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4882834/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27233666
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12862-016-0660-x
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