Keywords: virus

Male-killing virus leads to more female moths

Anonymous,  Nature,  2023.
Keisuke Nagamine at Minami Kyushu University in Miyazaki, Japan, and his colleagues have identified another virus that kills male embryos of the tobacco caterpillar, Spodoptera litura. Female moths infected with the virus produced an equal number of male and female embryos, but ...
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Male-killing virus in a noctuid moth Spodoptera litura

K. Nagamine, Y. Kanno, K. Sahara, T. Fujimoto, A. Yoshido, Y. Ishikawa, M. Terao, D. Kageyama and Y. Shintani,  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  120:e2312124120. 2023.
A female-biased sex ratio is considered advantageous for the cytoplasmic elements that inhabit sexually reproducing organisms. There are numerous examples of bacterial symbionts in the arthropod cytoplasm that bias the host sex ratio toward females through various means, ...
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Jamestown Canyon virus is transmissible by Aedes aegypti and is only moderately blocked by Wolbachia co-infection

M. J. Lau, H. L. C. Dutra, M. J. Jones, B. P. McNulty, A. M. Diaz, F. Ware-Gilmore and E. A. McGraw,  PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases,  17. 2023.
Jamestown Canyon virus (JCV), a negative-sense arbovirus, is increasingly common in the upper Midwest of the USA. Transmitted by a range of mosquito genera, JCV's primary amplifying host is white-tailed deer. Aedes aegypti is responsible for transmitting various positive-sense ...
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Wolbachia -induced inhibition of O’nyong nyong virus in Anopheles mosquitoes is mediated by Toll signaling and modulated by cholesterol

S. Pujhari, G. L. Hughes, N. Pakpour, Y. Suzuki and J. L. Rasgon,  bioRxiv,  10.1101/2023.05.31.543096. 2023.
Enhanced host immunity and competition for metabolic resources are two main competing hypotheses for the mechanism of Wolbachia -mediated pathogen inhibition in arthropods. Using an Anopheles mosquito - somatic Wolbachia infection - O'nyong nyong virus (ONNV) model, we ...
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Dengue Exposure and Wolbachia wMel Strain Affects the Fertility of Quiescent Eggs of Aedes aegypti

M. T. Petersen, D. Couto-Lima, G. A. Garcia, M. G. Pavan, M. R. David and R. Maciel-de-Freitas,  Viruses,  15. 2023.
(1) Background: The deployment of the bacterium Wolbachia to reduce arbovirus transmission is ongoing in several countries worldwide. When Wolbachia-carrying Aedes aegypti are released and established in the field, females may feed on dengue-infected hosts. The effects of ...
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A male-killing gene encoded by a symbiotic virus of Drosophila

D. Kageyama, T. Harumoto, K. Nagamine, A. Fujiwara, T. N. Sugimoto, A. Jouraku, M. Tamura, T. K. Katoh and M. Watada,  Nature Communications,  14:1357. 2023.
In most eukaryotes, biparentally inherited nuclear genomes and maternally inherited cytoplasmic genomes have different evolutionary interests. Strongly female-biased sex ratios that are repeatedly observed in various arthropods often result from the male-specific lethality ...
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Differential viral RNA methylation contributes to pathogen blocking in Wolbachia-colonized arthropods

T. Bhattacharya, L. Yan, J. M. Crawford, H. Zaher, I. L. G. Newton and R. W. Hardy,  PLoS Pathogens,  18:e1010393. 2022.
Arthropod endosymbiont Wolbachia pipientis is part of a global biocontrol strategy to reduce the replication of mosquito-borne RNA viruses such as alphaviruses. We previously demonstrated the importance of a host cytosine methyltransferase, DNMT2, in Drosophila and viral RNA as a ...
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Wolbachia reduces virus infection in a natural population of Drosophila

R. Cogni, S. D. Ding, A. C. Pimentel, J. P. Day and F. M. Jiggins,  Communications Biology,  4:1327. 2021.
Wolbachia is a maternally transmitted bacterial symbiont that is estimated to infect approximately half of arthropod species. In the laboratory it can increase the resistance of insects to viral infection, but its effect on viruses in nature is unknown. Here we report that in a ...
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Wolbachia-Conferred Antiviral Protection Is Determined by Developmental Temperature

E. Chrostek, N. Martins, M. S. Marialva and L. Teixeira,  mBio,  e0292320. 2021.
Overall, we show that Wolbachia-conferred antiviral protection is temperature dependent, being present or absent depending on the environmental conditions. This interaction likely impacts Wolbachia-host interactions in nature and, as a result, frequencies of host and symbionts in ...
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Genetically Modifying Bats Could Prevent the Next Pandemic, Scientists Say

G. Dutton,  BioSpace,  2021.
The next COVID pandemic could be prevented by using a gene drive to preemptively edit the genome of bats to prevent them from becoming hosts for coronaviruses, according to a proposal by scientists from Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzelia and the National ...
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Targeting Conserved Sequences Circumvents the Evolution of Resistance in a Viral Gene Drive against Human Cytomegalovirus

M. Walter, R. Perrone, E. Verdin and F. Goodrum,  Journal of Virology,  95:e00802-21. 2021.
Gene drives are genetic systems designed to efficiently spread a modification through a population. They have been designed almost exclusively in eukaryotic species, especially in insects. We recently developed a CRISPR-based gene drive system in herpesviruses that relies on ...
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Targeting conserved sequences circumvents the evolution of resistance in a viral gene drive against human cytomegalovirus

M. Walter, R. Perrone and E. Verdin,  Journal of virology,  2021.
Here, we analyze in cell culture experiments the evolution of resistance in a viral gene drive against human cytomegalovirus. We report that, after an initial invasion of the wildtype population, a drive-resistant population is positively selected over time and outcompetes gene ...
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Targeting evolutionary conserved sequences circumvents the evolution of resistance in a viral gene drive against human cytomegalovirus

M. Walter, R. Perrone and E. Verdin,  bioRxiv,  2021.01.08.425902. 2021.
Here, we analyze in cell culture experiments the evolution of resistance in a gene drive against human cytomegalovirus. We report that after an initial invasion of the wildtype population, a drive-resistant population is positively selected over time and outcompetes gene drive ...
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Wolbachia strain wAlbB maintains high density and dengue inhibition following introduction into a field population of Aedes aegypti

N. A. Ahmad, M.-V. Mancini, T. H. Ant, J. Martinez, G. M. R. Kamarul, W. A. Nazni, A. A. Hoffmann and S. P. Sinkins,  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,  376:20190809. 2020.
Here, wAlbB-carrying Ae. aegypti collected from the field 20 months after the cessation of releases showed no reduction in Wolbachia density or tissue distribution changes compared to a wAlbB laboratory colony. The wAlbB strain continued to induce complete unidirectional ...
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Gene Drives Could Kill Mosquitoes And Suppress Herpesvirus Infections

A. Berezow,  American Council on Science and Health,  2020.
A team of researchers writing in the journal Nature Communications has shown that a gene drive can be used to suppress infection with cytomegalovirus, a type of herpesvirus.
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Viral gene drive in herpesviruses

M. Walter and E. Verdin,  Nature Communications,  11:4884. 2020.
Here, we report on a gene drive system that allows the spread of an engineered trait in populations of DNA viruses and, in particular, herpesviruses.
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Viral gene drive in herpesviruses

Walter, M. and E. Verdin,  bioRxiv,  2019:717017. 2019.
Herpesviruses are ubiquitous pathogens in need of novel therapeutic solutions. Current engineered gene drive strategies rely on sexual reproduction, and are thought to be restricted to sexual organisms. Here, we report on the design of a novel gene drive system that allows the ...
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Variability in the durability of CRISPR-Cas immunity

Chabas, HN, A.; Meaden, S.; Westra, E. R.; Tremblay, D. M.; Pradier, L.; Lion, S.; Moineau, S.; Gandon, S.,  Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences,  374:1-9. 2019.
The durability of host resistance is challenged by the ability of pathogens to escape the defence of their hosts. Understanding the variability in the durability of host resistance is of paramount importance for designing more effective control strategies against infectious ...
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