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Wolbachia strain wPip yields a pattern of cytoplasmic incompatibility enhancing a Wolbachia-based suppression strategy against the disease vector Aedes albopictus

TitleWolbachia strain wPip yields a pattern of cytoplasmic incompatibility enhancing a Wolbachia-based suppression strategy against the disease vector Aedes albopictus
Publication TypeArticolo su Rivista peer-reviewed
Year of Publication2012
AuthorsCalvitti, Maurizio, Moretti Riccardo, Skidmore Amanda, and Dobson Stephen L.
JournalParasites & Vectors
Volume5
Date Published11/2012
KeywordsAedes albopictus, Cytoplasmic incompatibility, incompatible insect technique, Transinfection, Wolbachia pipientis
Abstract

Background. Cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) is induced in nature by Wolbachia bacteria, resulting in conditional male sterility. Previous research demonstrated that the two Wolbachia strains (wAlbA and wAlbB) that naturally co-infect the disease vector mosquito Aedes albopictus (Asian tiger mosquito) can be replaced with the wPip Wolbachia strain from Culex pipiens. In the resulting new mosquito line (ARwP), the wPip infection is efficiently transmitted from females to their offspring, and young ARwP males are incompatible with naturally-infected females (SR line). Since Wolbachia-based vector control strategies depend upon the strength and consistency of CI, a greater understanding is needed on the CI relationships between wPip, wAlbA and wAlbB Wolbachia in Ae. albopictus. Results. The paper reports an unusual pattern of CI observed in crossing experiments between ARwP and SR lines. In specific, ARwP males are able to induce full sterility in wild type females throughout most of their lifetime, while crosses between SR males and ARwP females become partially fertile with male aging. To understand the observed pattern of CI we set up crossing experiments involving artificial single-infected mosquito lines. We demonstrated that the observed decrease in CI penetrance with SR male age, is related to the previously described decrease in Wolbachia density, in particular of the wAlbA strain, occurring in aged superinfected males. In fact, we found that while wPip and wAlbA Wolbachia strains show a complete bidirectional CI, wPip and wAlbB display an asymmetrical pattern of CI: strong incompatibility was observed when males are infected with wPip strain, weak when males are infected with wAlbB. Conclusions. The results here reported benefit the use of the ARwP Ae. albopictus line as source of “ready-made sterile males”, in alternative to gamma radiation sterilized males, for autocidal suppression strategies against the Asian tiger mosquito. In fact, the CI induced by the ARwP males resulted strong (close to 100%) and not male age dependent up to 26 days; in addition, the age dependent CI weakening observed in the crosses between SR males and ARwP females simplifies the downstream efforts to preserve the genetic variability within the laboratory ARwP colonies, to date based on the antibiotic treatment of wild captured superinfected mosquitoes, also reducing the needed costs. Keywords: Cytoplasmic Incompatibility, Wolbachia pipientis, incompatible insect technique, transinfection, Aedes albopictus

DOI10.1186/1756-3305-5-254
Citation Key3552