The National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) has achieved a groundbreaking result in understanding the reproductive mechanism of symbiotic microorganisms in insects. In a recent study, researchers led by NARO successfully reproduced the phenomenon of sex reversal, or feminization, caused by the symbiotic microorganism Wolbachia in vitro. By extracting Wolbachia that has a feminizing effect from a lepidopteran pest insect called Ostrinia scapulalis, the research team transferred it into cultured cells established from male O. scapulalis. They identified two genes that were associated with sex determination and were under the control of Wolbachia by analyzing the feminized cells. This finding provides a valuable insight into the sex-reversal mechanism by Wolbachia, shedding light on how symbiotic microorganisms manipulate host sex determination.
Overview
Wolbachia is known to manipulate insect reproduction in various ways, such as feminizing male host insects, and this study has the potential to revolutionize pest control and the production of beneficial insects. The ability to feminize natural enemies of pests can improve the efficiency of pest control, as females consume more food than males and are less likely to disperse. In addition to reproducing sex reversal in vitro, the research team has also developed a method to easily determine the sex of cultured cells by PCR test, which cannot be determined visually. This will enable the efficient screening of symbionts with feminizing action and accelerate the elucidation of reproductive manipulation mechanisms by symbionts. The study was conducted in collaboration with Toyama University, the University of Tokyo, and Setsunan University. The new application of cultured cells has the potential to lead to the development of new technologies for pest control and efficient production of beneficial insects.
Publication
Benjamin Herran, Takafumi N. Sugimoto, Kazuyo Watanabe, Shigeo Imanishi, Tsutomu Tsuchida, Takashi Matsuo, Yukio Ishikawa, Daisuke Kageyama. (2022) Cell-based analysis reveals that sex-determining gene signals in Ostrinia are pivotally changed by male-killing Wolbachia. PNAS Nexus, pgac293. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac293
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