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The relative importance of DNA methylation and Dnmt2-mediated epigenetic regulation on Wolbachia densities and cytoplasmic incompatibility.

ABSTRACT: Wolbachia pipientis is a worldwide bacterial parasite of arthropods that infects germline cells and manipulates host reproduction to increase the ratio of infected females, the transmitting sex of the bacteria. The most common reproductive manipulation, cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), is expressed as embryonic death in crosses between infected males and uninfected females. Specifically, Wolbachia modify developing sperm in the testes by unknown means to cause a post-fertilization disruption of the sperm chromatin that incapacitates the first mitosis of the embryo. As these Wolbachia-induced changes are stable, reversible, and affect the host cell cycle machinery including DNA replication and chromosome segregation, we hypothesized that the host methylation pathway is targeted for modulation during cytoplasmic incompatibility because it accounts for all of these traits. Here we show that infection of the testes is associated with a 55% increase of host DNA methylation in Drosophila melanogaster, but methylation of the paternal genome does not correlate with penetrance of CI. Overexpression and knock out of the Drosophila DNA methyltransferase Dnmt2 neither induces nor increases CI. Instead, overexpression decreases Wolbachia titers in host testes by approximately 17%, leading to a similar reduction in CI levels. Finally, strength of CI induced by several different strains of Wolbachia does not correlate with levels of DNA methylation in the host testes. We conclude that DNA methylation mediated by Drosophila's only known methyltransferase is not required for the transgenerational sperm modification that causes CI.

SUBMITTER: LePage DP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4266856 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The relative importance of DNA methylation and Dnmt2-mediated epigenetic regulation on Wolbachia densities and cytoplasmic incompatibility.

LePage Daniel P DP Jernigan Kristin K KK Bordenstein Seth R SR

PeerJ 20141209

Wolbachia pipientis is a worldwide bacterial parasite of arthropods that infects germline cells and manipulates host reproduction to increase the ratio of infected females, the transmitting sex of the bacteria. The most common reproductive manipulation, cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI), is expressed as embryonic death in crosses between infected males and uninfected females. Specifically, Wolbachia modify developing sperm in the testes by unknown means to cause a post-fertilization disruption of ...[more]

PMID: 25538866

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Project description:BackgroundBacteria of the genus Wolbachia are reproductive parasites widespread among arthropods. The most common effect arising from the presence of Wolbachia in a population is Cytoplasmic Incompatibility (CI), whereby postmating reproductive isolation occurs in crosses between an infected male and an uninfected female, or when a male is infected with a different strain of Wolbachia to that of the female (bidirectional CI). Previous theoretical models have demonstrated that bidirectional CI can contribute to the genetic divergence of populations in haploid and diploid organisms. However, haplodiploid organisms were not considered in these models even though they include Nasonia parasitoid wasps - the best example of the implication of Wolbachia in ongoing speciation. Moreover, previous work did not investigate inbreeding mating systems, which are frequently observed in arthropod species.ResultsWe developed a stochastic two-island model which simulated three genetic scenarios, diploidy, haploidy, and haplodiploidy, with two CI phenotypes being considered for the latter: (1) male development of female progeny; and (2) mortality of fertilized eggs. We also investigated the effect of varying the proportion of sib mating. In the model each allopatric population was initially fixed for a single allele at a nuclear locus under positive selection and infected with one strain of Wolbachia. Each simulation presupposed that the two populations were fixed for a different allele and a different strain of Wolbachia. The degree of genetic differentiation observed in the locus under selection due to bidirectional CI was much lower for the two haplodiploid phenotypes than for either diploids or haploids. Furthermore, we demonstrated that sib-mating may compensate for the lower efficiency of bidirectional CI in haplodiploids by maintaining genetic divergence.ConclusionOur model suggests that maintenance of genetic differentiation facilitated by Wolbachia is more likely to occur in diploids and haploids than in haplodiploids. However, increasing the level of sib-mating may compensate for the weak effect of bidirectional CI in haplodiploids. Our work therefore gives a potential explanation for why the haplodiploid Nasonia species, which are infected with bidirectionally incompatible Wolbachia strains and undergo sib-mating, have differentiated genetically and maintained this differentiation without premating isolation.

Dataset Information

The relative importance of DNA methylation and Dnmt2-mediated epigenetic regulation on Wolbachia densities and cytoplasmic incompatibility.

Publications

The relative importance of DNA methylation and Dnmt2-mediated epigenetic regulation on Wolbachia densities and cytoplasmic incompatibility.

Similar Datasets

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