Publication: Microarray analysis of the transcriptome of a symbiotic bacterium in the pea aphid

November 6th, 2009

Bermingham J, Rabatel A, Calevro F, Viñuelas J, Febvay G, Charles H, Douglas AE and Wilkinson TL 2009. Impact of host developmental age on the transcriptome of the symbiotic bacterium Buchnera aphidicola in the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 75: 7294-7

The genome of the symbiotic bacterium Buchnera aphidicola is very small (0.64 Mb) with few genes and a dearth of identifiable regulatory sequences.  The gene expression of this bacteria is expected to be unresponsive to environmental or other perturbations.  Contrary to this expectation, we have found that 23% of the 617 Buchnera genes were significantly differentially expressed in embryo pea aphids compared to adults.  Genes involved in flagellar apparatus and riboflavin synthesis exhibited particularly robust upregulation in embryos, suggesting functional differences between the symbiosis in the adult and embryo insect.

This research was conducted as part of an international collaboration with Dr Hubert Charles and other colleagues at INRA-Lyon (France) in the METNET consortium, and with colleagues in the laboratory of Dr Tom Wilkinson at University College Dublin (Ireland).