Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
College/Unit
School of Medicine
Department/Program/Center
Microbiology, Immunology, and Cell Biology
Abstract
While typically a flea parasite and opportunistic human pathogen, the presence of Rickettsia felis (strain LSU-Lb) in the non-blood- feeding, parthenogenetically reproducing booklouse, Liposcelis bostrychophila, provides a system to ascertain factors governing not only host transitions but also obligate reproductive parasitism (RP). Analysis of plasmid pLbAR, unique to R. felis str. LSU-Lb, revealed a toxin–antitoxin module with similar features to prophage-encoded toxin–antitoxin modules utilized by parasitic Wolbachia strains to induce another form of RP, cytoplasmic incompatibility, in their arthropod hosts. Curiously, multiple deubiquitinase and nuclease domains of the large (3,841 aa) pLbAR toxin, as well the entire antitoxin, facilitated the detection of an assortment of related proteins from diverse intracellular bacteria, including other reproductive parasites. Our description of these remarkable components of the intracellular mobilome, including their presence in certain arthropod genomes, lends insight on the evolution of RP, while invigo- rating research on parasite-mediated biocontrol of arthropod-borne viral and bacterial pathogens.
Digital Commons Citation
Gillespie, Joseph J.; Driscoll, Timothy P.; Verhoeve, Victoria I.; Rahman, Mohammed Sayeedur; and Macaluso, Kevin R., "A Tangled Web: Origins of Reproductive Parasitism" (2018). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 1438.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/1438
Source Citation
Adams JR, Schmidtmann ET, Azad AF. 1990. Infection of colonized cat fleas, Ctenocephalides felis (Bouche), with a Rickettsia-like microor- ganism. Am I Trop Med Hyg. 43(4):400–40990.
Included in
Biology Commons, Medical Immunology Commons, Medical Microbiology Commons, Medical Pathology Commons
Comments
ß The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non- commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
GBE
A Tangled Web: Origins of Reproductive Parasitism
1, 2 2 1 Joseph J. Gillespie *, Timothy P. Driscoll , Victoria I. Verhoeve , Mohammed Sayeedur Rahman , Kevin R.
31 Macaluso , and Abdu F. Azad
1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine 2Department of Biology, West Virginia University 3Vector-borne Disease Laboratories, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, Louisiana State University
*Corresponding author: E-mail: jgillespie@som.umaryland.edu. Accepted: July 26, 2018
Abstract
While typically a flea parasite and opportunistic human pathogen, the presence of Rickettsia felis (strain LSU-Lb) in the non-blood- feeding, parthenogenetically reproducing booklouse, Liposcelis bostrychophila, provides a system to ascertain factors governing not only host transitions but also obligate reproductive parasitism (RP). Analysis of plasmid pLbAR, unique to R. felis str. LSU-Lb, revealed a toxin–antitoxin module with similar features to prophage-encoded toxin–antitoxin modules utilized by parasitic Wolbachia strains to induce another form of RP, cytoplasmic incompatibility, in their arthropod hosts. Curiously, multiple deubiquitinase and nuclease domains of the large (3,841 aa) pLbAR toxin, as well the entire antitoxin, facilitated the detection of an assortment of related proteins from diverse intracellular bacteria, including other reproductive parasites. Our description of these remarkable components of the intracellular mobilome, including their presence in certain arthropod genomes, lends insight on the evolution of RP, while invigo- rating research on parasite-mediated biocontrol of arthropod-borne viral and bacterial pathogens.
Key words: reproductive parasitism, cytoplasmic incompatibility, parthenogenesis, Rickettsia, Wolbachia, intracellular bacteria.