Insights beyond Wolbachia-Drosophila interactions: never completely trust a model: insights from cytoplasmic incompatibility beyond Wolbachia-Drosophila interactions.

摘要

Recent years have witnessed the revelation of inherited microorganisms as major features of arthropod biology. Among them, the alpha-Proteobacteria Wolbachia has experienced a remarkable explosion of interest, fascinating biologists by its capacity to drive the evolution of their hosts, for instance inducing postzygotic sterility, altering sex ratios or affecting the host's genome organization (Bandi et al., 2001; Dunning Hotopp et al, 2007). The lifestyle of Wolbachia is a true success story since these endosymbionts became among the most abundant on Earth-they are four or five times as common as any other inherited bacterium (Duron et al., 2008)-by manipulating the reproduction of arthropods. How this manipulation takes place is an intriguing quest for Science but very little is actually known. A key step forward was achieved by studying the behaviour of a variety of Wolbachia strains in the melanogaster group of Drosophila fruit flies. However, in a recent issue of Heredity, Clark et al. (2008) present new insights on Wolbachia biology through the use of understudied host model systems. Although Drosophila reigns supreme as a laboratory system, Clark et al. (2008) establish that conclusions from the Wolbachia-Drosophila interactions may not hold true across all Wolbachia-insect interactions.