3 ms·

Here's the actual study - http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005470 http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371

Here's the actual study - http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1005470 http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/jou... - it's in PLOS Genetics so it's open access for all. The basic gist is that some parasitic wasps also transfer a virus to their caterpillar hosts. That virus has now been shown to insert and transfer some wasps genes to some non-host caterpillars. The introduction mentions wolbachia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolbachia - which is an awesome bacterial parasite; it has also transferred genes to hosts. Researchers thought the bacteriophage in Wolbachia helped take part in horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which this study backs up nicely.

jhedwards 11y ago
My grandfather found a parthenogenetic spider and wanted to investigate the possibility that Wolbachia was somehow responsible. Don't think he made much progress though, it was near the end of his life. Here's the article about the spider: http://www.americanarachnology.org/joa_free/joa_v31_n2/arac-031-02-0274.pdf http://www.americanarachnology.org/joa_free/joa_v31_n2/arac-...
eivarv 11y ago
That's pretty cool. Semi-relevant: Richard Dawkins touches upon the relationship between the genes of parasites and hosts in the Chap. 13, "The Long Reach of the Gene" (added in 2. ed.) of his book "The Selfish Gene". He says that if the parasite genes are "transmitted to future generations via the same vehicles as the host's genes [...], the parasite will do all that it can to help the host, not only to survive, but to reproduce. Over evolutionary time it will cease to be a parasite, will cooperate with the host, and may eventually merge into the host's tissues and become unrecognizable as a parasite at all." [0] P.S. Apropos of Wolbachia, did you also play MGS V recently?;P [0]: https://books.google.no/books?id=koaD_Aod_V0C&lpg=PT343&ots=m91oEBweVD&dq=the%20selfish%20gene%20parasite&hl=no&pg=PT343#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.no/books?id=koaD_Aod_V0C&lpg=PT343&ots=...

jhedwards 11y ago

My grandfather found a parthenogenetic spider and wanted to investigate the possibility that Wolbachia was somehow responsible. Don't think he made much progress though, it was near the end of his life. Here's the article about the spider: http://www.americanarachnology.org/joa_free/joa_v31_n2/arac-031-02-0274.pdf http://www.americanarachnology.org/joa_free/joa_v31_n2/arac-...

eivarv 11y ago

That's pretty cool. Semi-relevant: Richard Dawkins touches upon the relationship between the genes of parasites and hosts in the Chap. 13, "The Long Reach of the Gene" (added in 2. ed.) of his book "The Selfish Gene". He says that if the parasite genes are "transmitted to future generations via the same vehicles as the host's genes [...], the parasite will do all that it can to help the host, not only to survive, but to reproduce. Over evolutionary time it will cease to be a parasite, will cooperate with the host, and may eventually merge into the host's tissues and become unrecognizable as a parasite at all." [0] P.S. Apropos of Wolbachia, did you also play MGS V recently?;P [0]: https://books.google.no/books?id=koaD_Aod_V0C&lpg=PT343&ots=m91oEBweVD&dq=the%20selfish%20gene%20parasite&hl=no&pg=PT343#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.no/books?id=koaD_Aod_V0C&lpg=PT343&ots=...