2010 Patton Lecture - Monday, October 11, 2010

October 15th, 2010

The 2010 Patton Lecture was held on Monday, October 11, 2010 and given by Professor Serap Aksoy Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health.

Serap's lecture was entitled:
Microbial influences on insect physiology: Lessons learned from Tsetse Fly

SUMMARY
Insects provide excellent systems to study the dynamic interplay between beneficial microbial symbionts and their hosts, especially in relation to insect nutritional physiology and immune function. We use the tsetse fly, Glossina morsitans, and its obligate bacterial symbiont, Wigglesworthia glossinidia, to investigate the co-evolutionary adaptations that influence host physiological processes. Wigglesworthia is maternally transmitted to larvae in the uterus of the tsetse fly mother, and we can produce flies that lack this symbiont by interfering with this process. Such offspring give rise to adults that exhibit a largely normal phenotype, with the exception that they are reproductively sterile. Our results indicate that when reared under normal environmental conditions adults that lack Wigglesworthia have a highly compromised immune system and can be easily parasitized with trypanosome infections. Our results demonstrate that Wigglesworthia in particular is required during the development of immature progeny in order for tsetse's immune system to function properly during adulthood. This phenomenon provides evidence of yet another important physiological adaptation that further anchors the obligate symbiosis between tsetse and Wigglesworthia.

The webpage for the Aksoy Lab on Trypanosomiasis/Tsetse Research is http://info.med.yale.edu/eph/faculty/labs/aksoy/People%20Pages/Serap_Aksoy.html