Phylogenetic characterization of two strains of Wolbachia in natural mosquito populations from Misiones province, Argentina.

RODRIGUERO, MARCELA S.; MUTTIS, EVANGELINA; BONICA MELISA BERENICE; MICIELI MARIA VICTORIA,; CHUCHUY, AILÉN; CANO, MARIA EUGENIA

Manaus

Congreso; 1st ANNUAL MEETING OF THE LATIN AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR VECTOR ECOLOGY; 2019

Society of Vector Ecology

Wolbachia is a maternally transmitted endosymbiotic bacteria that naturally infects a wide variety of arthropods, inducing several sexual alterations collectively known as reproductive parasitism. This bacterium infects several species of mosquitoes, some of them important vectors of human diseases. It was shown that Wolbachia causes a type of sterility known as cytoplasmatic incompatibility (CI) in mosquitoes. In addition, natural infections of some mosquito populations can reduce its ability to transmit certain arboviruses that affect human health. At present, there is considerable interest in the use of Wolbachia as a vector control agent of health importance. Such control strategies may require the introduction of multiple Wolbachia strains in populations of disease-vector mosquitoes, which requires the proper identification and characterization of strains currently circulating in nature.In this work we characterized the strains wFlu and wAlbB found in Aedes fluviatilis and Aedes albopictus, respectively. We used the standard typing system based on multilocus genotypes and subsequent phylogenetic analysis.Wolbachia coxA, fbpA, ftsZ, gatB and hcpA genes were amplified and sequenced. Each allele was identified through comparison with the Wolbachia MLST database (http://pubmlst.org/wolbachia). Strains were characterized by the combination of alleles (allelic profile or ST) and the supergroup was determined through phylogenetic analysis using Bayesian inference implemented in MrBayes v.3.2.6. Fifty two strains representing the A-H supergroups were included. In the absence of a suitable external group, it was rooted with a strain of supergroup H.Allelic profiles were the following (according to the alphabetical order of the genes): 66-27-179-215-229 for wFlu and 229-27-210-242-166 for wAlbB.In accordance with previous phylogenetic analyses based on the wsp sequence, wAlbB belongs to supergroup B of the Wolbachia genus, as well as wFlu. Although they are in the same clade, the limited support of this group does not allow the inference of the relationships between them. The phylogenetic position of these strains and other mosquito isolates (wAlbA, wPip), confirms that horizontal transfer events have occurred within this group of insects, as it has been widely documented for this genus bacterial.