A strain of the bacteriumWolbachiareduces aggression in male fruit flies . The breakthrough strike off the first time bacterial infection has been shown to alter aggressiveness . The finding could bolster the quest to pass over out insect - borne diseases such as malaria and dengue pyrexia .
TheWolbachiagenus of bacteria infectshalf the insect metal money on Earth , as well as many other invertebrates . Different strains have highly varied effects , with some impart our hopes tocontrol mosquito - born disease .
Depending on the nervous strain , Wolbachiamay either interpose withdengue transmissionor kill mosquitoesold enough to carry diseases , while go away untested ones whole to retard thedevelopmentof immunity .
Numerous research labs have been working on the idea , seeking a strain ofWolbachiathat has the required machine characteristic to wipe out these diseases and economise 1000000 of lives . Much of the research is done , not on mosquito , but onDrosophila melanogaster – the fruit fly used as aninsect simulation organism .
In the row of research lab work at Griffith University , Elizabeth Bondy , an undergraduate on interchange from the University of Arizona , noticed something odd . Fruit rainfly infected with one melodic phrase ofWolbachiaseemed to fight less than those infect with other melody , or not infect at all .
Bondy and Ph.D. scholarly person Chelsie Rohrscheib filmed the flies ' behavior to verify Bondy ’s impression , lead toa paper in Applied and Environmental Microbiology .
The brace found that flies infect with thewMelPop straininitiated only a third as many fights as clean flies , while the conduct of those taint with one of the two other strains did not exchange . However , once thewMelPop flies did battle , they fought as long as their peers . Dr. Jeremy Brownlie , oral sex of the lab where the research was done , says this demonstrates that thewMelPop flies were not damp – they could still fight if take , they just rarely felt like it .
ThewMelPop form was establish to bottle up two genes that go to the production of octopamine , which Brownlie suppose , “ Suggested thatWolbachiadirectly bear on fruit take flight factor function . ”
Rohrscheib told IFLScience that it is not exonerated if theWolbachiastrain gains some benefit from turning its hosts into pacifist . “ I ’m currently studying pairing success for infected males when competing for females , ” she said .
This matter , Rohrscheib says , because the challenge is to witness a variant ofWolbachiathat both controls disease and spreads through the mosquito universe . “ With theQueensland dengue trials , one var. spread very successfully , did exactly what they wanted , the other that had the same viral protective covering effect could not get it to take hold in the population , ” she allege .
The spread of the bacterium is driven bycytoplasmic incompatibility , which stops infected males and uninfected females from breed successfully . An intellect of how strains change manlike mating behavior might be the key to explaining why some strains spread in the wild and others do n’t .
Vertebrates are immune toWolbachia , so you wo n’t make world peace by infecting us all with an aggression - reducing version . However , Rohrscheib take note that there are parallels withToxoplasma gondii , the parasite that take a leak the great unwashed more rash andmay quash intelligence .
