imprint:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021
Published in:BMC Biology
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1186/s12915-021-01124-y
ISSN:
1741-7007
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>Background</jats:title><jats:p>How microbes affect host fitness and environmental adaptation has become a fundamental research question in evolutionary biology. To better understand the role of microbial genomic variation for host fitness, we tested for associations of bacterial genomic variation and<jats:italic>Drosophila melanogaster</jats:italic>offspring number in a microbial Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS).</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results</jats:title><jats:p>We performed a microbial GWAS, leveraging strain variation in the genus<jats:italic>Gluconobacter</jats:italic>, a genus of bacteria that are commonly associated with<jats:italic>Drosophila</jats:italic>under natural conditions. We pinpoint the thiamine biosynthesis pathway (TBP) as contributing to differences in fitness conferred to the fly host. While an effect of thiamine on fly development has been described, we show that strain variation in TBP between bacterial isolates from wild-caught<jats:italic>D. melanogaster</jats:italic>contributes to variation in offspring production by the host. By tracing the evolutionary history of TBP genes in<jats:italic>Gluconobacter</jats:italic>, we find that TBP genes were most likely lost and reacquired by horizontal gene transfer (HGT).</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusion</jats:title><jats:p>Our study emphasizes the importance of strain variation and highlights that HGT can add to microbiome flexibility and potentially to host adaptation.</jats:p></jats:sec>