Horizontal gene transfer-mediated bacterial strain variation affects host fitness in Drosophila

BMC Biology

Franz Baumdicker¹  Yun Wang²  Fabian Staubach²  Sven Kuenzel³  Paul Schweiger⁴ 

[1] Cluster of Excellence ‘Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections’, University of Tübingen;Department of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology, Institute of Biology I, Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg;Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology;Microbiology Department, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse;

关键词: Drosophila;    Microbiome;    GWAS;    Horizontal gene transfer;    Lateral gene transfer;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12915-021-01124-y

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Background How microbes affect host fitness and environmental adaptation has become a fundamental research question in evolutionary biology. To better understand the role of microbial genomic variation for host fitness, we tested for associations of bacterial genomic variation and Drosophila melanogaster offspring number in a microbial Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS). Results We performed a microbial GWAS, leveraging strain variation in the genus Gluconobacter, a genus of bacteria that are commonly associated with Drosophila under natural conditions. We pinpoint the thiamine biosynthesis pathway (TBP) as contributing to differences in fitness conferred to the fly host. While an effect of thiamine on fly development has been described, we show that strain variation in TBP between bacterial isolates from wild-caught D. melanogaster contributes to variation in offspring production by the host. By tracing the evolutionary history of TBP genes in Gluconobacter, we find that TBP genes were most likely lost and reacquired by horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Conclusion Our study emphasizes the importance of strain variation and highlights that HGT can add to microbiome flexibility and potentially to host adaptation.

【 授权许可】

Unknown