Wenzel, Miwa Aquadro, Charles F. The rapidly evolving Drosophila bag-of-marbes gene and its interactions with Wolbachia 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. 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
    https://tagc2020.figshare.com/articles/poster/The_rapidly_evolving_Drosophila_bag-of-marbes_gene_and_its_interactions_with_Wolbachia/12149655
10.6084/m9.figshare.12149655.v1