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Q&A ViewAttendees 8

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

Student Competition 10-Minute Paper

Grad SysEB: Parasites and Symbionts

Uncovering Parthenogenesis Inducing Factors of Wolbachia

Monday, November 1, 2021
11:30 AM – 11:42 AM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 405-407
In-Person Student Competition

    Presenting Author(s)

  • LF

    Laura Fricke

    University of Minnesota
    Golden Valley, Minnesota

    • Co-Author(s)

  • Amelia Lindsey

    Assistant Professor
    University of Minnesota
    Minneapolis, Minnesota

Despite ancestrally sexual modes of reproduction in insects, many lineages have reverted to various forms of asexual reproduction. The bacterium Wolbachia is a well-known maternally transmitted, endosymbiotic reproductive manipulator, found in about half of all insect species. In many haplodiploid organisms such as the parasitoid wasps Trichogramma pretiosum and Leptopilina clavipes, Wolbachia infection is the causative agent of the shift to asexuality and asexual populations rely on Wolbachia for diploidization of unfertilized eggs to produce females. The bacterial genes involved in diploidization culminating in asexuality is not known. We compared parthenogenesis-inducing Wolbachia genomes (including the “wTpre” strain from T. pretiosum and “wLcla” from L. clavipes) to uncover two candidate genes, “parthenogenesis inducing factors” (PIFs), that may be involved in the diploidization of wasp embryos. We find that the PIF genes are expressed by wTpre, and their expression varies across host development. As both the wTpre and Trichogramma lack tools for genetic manipulation,we will use surrogate approaches to bypass limited genetic techniques and characterize the function of the PIF proteins. This will provide further insight into the parthenogenetic mechanisms employed by some Wolbachia strains, as well as asexuality more broadly.