490: Parasitoid Pox Partners

This episode: A virus partners with a parasitoid wasp to help
exploit fruit fly victims!


Download Episode (7.7 MB, 11.2 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Actinomadura livida


Takeaways


Parasitoid wasps have an interesting lifestyle: they inject their
eggs into the larvae of other insects, and their young hatch and
grow up by consuming the host from the inside. Some of these
wasps also inject a virus along with the egg, which supports the
wasp offspring by suppressing the host immune system.

Most of these parasitoid helper viruses are integrated into the
host wasp genome and are translated and produced as needed, but
in this study, an independently replicating entomopoxvirus serves
as an example of a virus-wasp mutualism. The study explores how
the virus can infect the wasp prey, and how it gets passed on to
wasp offspring.



Journal Paper:
Coffman KA, Hankinson QM, Burke GR. 2022. A viral mutualist
employs posthatch transmission for vertical and horizontal spread
among parasitoid wasps. Proc Natl Acad Sci 119:e2120048119.


 


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