Wolbachia-induced expression of kenny gene in testes affects male fertility in Drosophila melanogaster  

作　　者：John C.Biwot Hua-Bao Zhang Chen Liu Jun-Xue Qiao Xiao-Qiang Yu Yu-Feng Wang 

机构地区：[1]School of Life Sciences,Hubei Key Laboratory of Genetic Regulation and Integrative Biology,Central China Normal University,Wuhan,China

出　　处：《Insect Science》2020年第5期869-882,共14页昆虫科学（英文版）

基　　金：Authors thank Professor Scott O'Neill(Monash Univer-sity,Australia)for prov iding Dmel wMel flies.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Founda-tion of China(No.31672352).

摘　　要：Wolbachia are Gram-negative endosymbionts that are known to cause embry-onic lethality when infected male insects mate with uninfected females or with females carrying a different strain of Wolbachia,a situation characterized as cytoplasmice incom-patibility(CD).However,the mechanism of CI is not yet fully understood,although re-cent studies on Drosophila melanogaster have achieved great progress.Here,we found that Wolbachia infection caused changes in the expressions of several immunity-related genes,including significant upregulation of kenny(key),in the testes of D.melanogaster.Overexpression of key in fly testes led to a significant decrease in egg hatch rates when these fies mate with wild-type females.Wolbachia-infected females could rescue this embryonic lethality.Furthermore,in key overexpressing testes terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP-biotin nick-end labeling signal was significantly stronger than in the control testes,and the level of reactive oxygen species was significantly increased.Overexpression of key also resulted in alterations of some other immunity-related gene expressions,including the downregulation of Zn72D.Knockdown of Zn72D in fly testes also led to a significant decrease in egg hatch rates.These results suggest that Wolbachia might induce the defect in male host fertility by immunity-related pathways and thus cause an oxidative damage and cell death in male testes.

关 键 词：Drosophila melanogaster KEY TESTES WOLBACHIA Zn72D 

分 类 号：Q96[生物学—昆虫学]