{"id":609,"date":"2014-12-26T08:21:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T13:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/?p=609"},"modified":"2017-01-06T10:49:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T15:49:48","slug":"tricks-not-treats-the-genetic-basis-of-how-a-parasite-manipulates-its-hosts-reproduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/?p=609","title":{"rendered":"Is the Transmission Rate of The Wolbachia Parasite Lower in Hybrids Compared To Pure Species?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jasmine Gipson, from Kennesaw State University, worked with Dr. Kelly Dyer in the UGA Genetics department to study the transmission of Wolbachia, a parasite of insects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract<\/strong><i><strong>: <\/strong>Wolbachia <\/i>is an endosymbiont parasite that lives in the reproductive system 70% of all insects. It is passed down vertically to its offspring from the mother. <i>Wolbachia <\/i>occurs naturally in <i>D. recens, <\/i>but not <i>D. subquinaria.<\/i> In the wild, <i>D. recens <\/i>and <i>D. subquinaria <\/i>hybridize and about 2-3% of those hybrid offsprings contain a <i>D. recen\u00e2&#8217;s <\/i>mitochondria, but not the <i>wolbachia. <\/i>This is a strange situation because the mitochondria is only passed down through the mother&#8217;s eggs, just like <i>wolbachia. <\/i>So how is it possible to have a <i>D. recen\u00e2&#8217;s <\/i>mitochondria, but not the <i>wolbachia <\/i>as well? This peculiar scenario led to the question, is the transmission rate of <i>wolbachia <\/i>lower in hybrids compared to pure species? To answer this question, a <i>D. recens <\/i>female was crossed with a <i>D. subquinaria. <\/i>The F1 hybrid female was then backcrossed to a <i>D. subquinaria <\/i>male. The F1 and F2 generations were both test for <i>wolbachia <\/i>using PCR. The transmission rate for the F1 generation had a transmission rate of 100% and the F2 generation had a transmission rate of 95.7%. This shows that the transmission rate of <i>wolbachia<\/i> is lowered in hybrid species compared to pure species. Possible explanations for this decrease in transmission rate is because of the genetic variation between <i>D. recens <\/i>and <i>D. subquinaria <\/i>or the parasite could have been randomly loss due to oogenesis.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><code><code><iframe src=\"\/\/docs.google.com\/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Freu.ecology.uga.edu%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F08%2FGipson_poster.pdf&hl=en_US&embedded=true\" class=\"gde-frame\" style=\"width:100%; height:500px; border: none;\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<p class=\"gde-text\"><a href=\"http:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Gipson_poster.pdf\" class=\"gde-link\">Download (PDF, 760KB)<\/a><\/p><\/code><\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jasmine Gipson, from Kennesaw State University, worked with Dr. Kelly Dyer in the UGA Genetics department to study the transmission of Wolbachia, a parasite of insects. Abstract: Wolbachia is an endosymbiont parasite that lives in the reproductive system 70% of all insects. It is passed down vertically to its offspring from the mother. Wolbachia occurs<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/?p=609\" class=\"themebutton2\">READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[23,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reu.ecology.uga.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}