Abstract for presentation at 11th International Congress of Human Genetics

Wolbachia are maternally inherited endosymbiont bacteria that commonly infect a range of insects, arachnids and filarial nematodes. Wolbachia strains that infect insects often modify the host’s reproduction to increase the number of infected females within a population. A strain of Wolbachia, wMelPop, which naturally infects Drosophila melanogaster is known to severely reduce the lifespan of adult flies. As many mosquito borne diseases, such as dengue and malaria, are transmitted by older mosquitoes changing the age structure of insect vector species has been proposed as a method to reduce or eliminate disease transmission. Understanding how wMelPop reduces the lifespan of D. melanogaster is an important step towards field applications of Wolbachia aimed at modifying mosquito age structures. Cytological inspections of flies infected with wMelpop or a closely related strain that doesn’t induce life shortening, suggests that the virulent strain over-replicates within the host’s cells, in particular neural tissues. Previous attempts to map the life-shortening trait failed to identify a locus or loci linked to the virulent trait. Using PCR we have successfully amplified, and subsequently sequenced the entire genome of wMelpop. We present our findings from these experiments, describe potential virulence-associated loci and discuss future strategies in light of our findings.