University of California, Berkeley biologists have discovered that several fruit fly species have acquired a bacterial defense mechanism to survive predation by parasitic wasps. This horizontal gene transfer, more common in microbes, involves the flies stealing a gene that protects them from becoming surrogate wombs for wasp offspring. This finding sheds light on the evolution of animal immune defenses and offers potential insights for human therapies against parasitic, infectious, and cancerous diseases.
University of California - BerkeleyDec 24 2024 In the continual arms race between parasites and their hosts, innovation was thought to be the key to a successful attack or defense that one-ups the competition.
Last year, the researchers and their colleagues in Hungary used CRISPR genome editing to knock out the gene responsible for the defense in one widespread fly species, Drosophila ananassae, and found that nearly all the genetically modified flies died from predation by parasitic wasps. According to Whiteman, senior author of the paper, "The study shows that in order to keep up with the barrage of parasites that are continually evolving new ways to overcome host defenses, a good strategy for animals is to borrow genes from even more rapidly evolving viruses and bacteria, and that's just what these flies have done."
What he's learned, however, likely applies to many other insects, among the most successful herbivores on Earth. When Tarnopol first used gene editing to express the toxin gene in all cells of D. melanogaster, all the flies died. But when Tarnopol expressed the gene only in certain immune cells, the fly became as resistant to parasites as its cousin, D. ananassae.
HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER EVOLUTION IMMUNE SYSTEM PARASITES FRUIT FLIES
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