10.6084/m9.figshare.12149655.v1 Miwa Wenzel Miwa Wenzel Charles F. Aquadro Charles F. Aquadro The rapidly evolving Drosophila bag-of-marbes gene and its interactions with Wolbachia TAGC 2020 2020 Drosophila Bag of Marbles Wolbachia Germline Stem Cells Molecular evolution Horizontal Gene Transfer Modeling Hypomorph Positive selection Population, Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics Host-Parasite Interactions Genetics Evolutionary Biology Developmental Biology 2020-04-20 22:32:50 Poster https://tagc2020.figshare.com/articles/poster/The_rapidly_evolving_Drosophila_bag-of-marbes_gene_and_its_interactions_with_Wolbachia/12149655 Work on the evolution of the Drosophila bag-of-marbles (bam) gene in the Aquadro lab. Bam plays a key role in early gametogenesis, making it surprising that it shows evidence of rapid and episodic evolution. Here we are exploring they hypothesis that Wolbachia, a germline endosymbiotic bacteria is contributing to bam's rapid evolution. We have discovered a novel interaction between bam and Wolbachia in males; we have created a pipeline to look for the possibility of historic Wolbachia and bam interactions, finding evidence of this in some D. mel individuals; and we have developed two models in which bam and Wolbachia may be interacting, with preliminary results suggesting a model of convergent molecular evolution.