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Wolbachia, the Eccentric Life Form:from its Fundamentals to Application Potential
The Wolbachia bacterium belongs to α-proteobacteria and is one of the most prevalent intracellular endosymbionts of arthropods and nematodes. One theoretical study suggests that the bacterium may infect up to 66% of insect species. Its fundamental biology and potential applications have been paid much attention with its ability to induce 4 distinct reproductive anomalies and other modifications of its various hosts. The four reproductive anomalies include, i) cytoplasmic incompatibility, where embryonic death results from the cross between an uninfected female and an infected male, ii) feminization, where an infected egg with male genetic background develops into an infected functional female, iii) male killing, where infected eggs with male genetic background dies in their early developmental stage, iv) parthenogenesis, exclusively where, in organisms with haplodiploid sex determination, an infected unfertilized egg develops into an infected female. All these reproductive anomalies, except cytoplasmic incompatibility, cause female biased sex ratio because females can descend cytoplasm to the next generation where the bacterium can reside. Furthermore, these have nothing to do with hosts’ evolutionary interests but only with the bacterial evolutionary interests (i.e. its prosperity). In this sense, the bacterium is one of the pronounced examples of selfish genetic elements. Recent researches also focus on some novel phenomena other than these reproductive anomalies mentioned above. We will review recent advances in general biology of the bacterium, its impacts on host life history, the reproductive anomalies and cellular mechanisms underlying them and potential utilization of the bacterium for better agricultural and medical environments.
