Month: September 2022

CROSSING SPECIES BARRIER. “Consistent with this process of clade selection, Wolbachia frequently jumps between host species. Our observations suggest that clade selection may also be acting at the level of the cif genes as Wolbachia genomes appear to be frequently recolonized by cif genes from other symbionts.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

SURVIVAL STRATEGY. “The pervasive horizontal transfer of cif genes may allow them to evade inevitable extinction within symbiont lineages by escaping into a new symbiont population. This process is analogous to the evolution of transposable elements, which frequently go extinct within host species, but persist long term by jumping into new species.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

Old pots in Catalonia that get cracked are frequently mended by means of metal staples. View in LinkedIn

ASSISTANCE FROM OTHER PLAYERS. “Horizontal transfer of cif genes occurs frequently and sometimes over large phylogenetic distances, sometimes even crossing the bacterial genus boundaries. High rates of horizontal transfer likely result from the cif genes being associated with mobile genetic elements, such as WO prophage sequences, transposons, and plasmids.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

UNCORRELATED. “Interestingly, Lepage et al. (2017) found no significant association between the phylogenies of cif genes and genes found in the structural module of phages. Prophage regions often rearrange which likely explains this pattern.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

MINOR PLAYER. “However, this does not mean that phages are not a major route of horizontal transmission of cif genes, and the association between cif genes and mobile genetic elements supports the idea that the ability to move horizontally between genomes may be an important adaptation of these elements.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

LAYERED PIGGYBACK. “Indeed, cif genes that lose their association with mobile elements may ultimately go extinct as they would be less likely to undergo horizontal transfer. As argued by Beckmann, Bonneau, et al. (2019), in some cases CI may be best viewed as an adaptation of mobile genetic elements to spread within Wolbachia populations.” (CI = cytoplasmic incompatibility). https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

GENERIC DIVERSITY. “Wolbachia genomes often carry multiple cifA–cifB gene pairs. This is analogous to the frequent occurrence of multiple Wolbachia strains within the same host individuals. Both experimental and theoretical studies have demonstrated that such multiple infections can invade host populations provided the strains carry different modification and rescue factors.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn

DIRECTIONALITY HYPOTHESIS. “This is because females harboring additional Wolbachia strains will be compatible with all males in the population. An equivalent process will promote the invasion and maintenance of cif paralogs within the same genome, provided that they encode bidirectionally incompatible modification and rescue factors. If bidirectionally incompatibility evolves gradually, this hypothesis predicts that paralogous cif genes within a genome might be distantly related.” https://lnkd.in/dXjWp9f View in LinkedIn