< i > Wolbachia < /i > infection at least partially rescues the fertility and ovary defects of several new < i > Drosophila melanogaster bag of marbles < /i > protein-coding mutants

by Miwa Wenzel, Charles F. Aquadro TheD.melanogaster protein coding genebag of marbles (bam) plays a key role in early male and female reproduction by forming complexes with partner proteins to promote differentiation in gametogenesis. Like another germline gene,Sex lethal,bam genetically interacts with the endosymbiontWolbachia, asWolbachia rescues the reduced fertility of abam hypomorphic mutant. Here, we explored the specificity of thebam-Wolbachia interaction by generating 22 newbam mutants, with ten mutants displaying fertility defects. Nine of these mutants trend towards rescue by thewMelWolbachia variant, with eight statistically significant at the fertility and/or cytological level. In some cases, fertility was increased a striking 20-fold. There is no specificity between the rescue and the known binding regions ofbam, suggestingwMel does not interact with one singularbam partner to rescue the reproductive phenotype. We further tested ifwMel interacts withbam in a non-specific way, by increasingbam transcript levels or acting upstream in germline stem cells. A fertility assessment of abam RNAi knockdown mutant reveals thatwMel rescue is specific to functionally mutantbam alleles and we find no obvious evidence ofwMel interaction with germline stem cells inbam mutants.
Source: PLoS Genetics - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Source Type: research