Publications related to Functional analysis of RIP toxins from the Drosophila endosymbiont Spiroplasma poulsonii

Inheritance of H3K9 methylation regulates genome architecture in Drosophila early embryos

Constitutive heterochromatin is essential for transcriptional silencing and genome integrity. The establishment of constitutive heterochromatin in early embryos and its role in early fruitfly development are unknown. Lysine 9 trimethylation of histone H3 ( ...

Springernature2024

Host-derived organic acids enable gut colonization of the honey bee symbiont Snodgrassella alvi

Anders Meibom, Stéphane Laurent Escrig

Diverse bacteria can colonize the animal gut using dietary nutrients or by engaging in microbial crossfeeding interactions. Less is known about the role of host-derived nutrients in enabling gut bacterial colonization. Here we examined metabolic interactio ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Functional characterization of Drosophila melanogaster immune effectors

Alexia Laurie Carboni

Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as the "fruit fly", is a genetically tractable model organism widely used to study biological processes, notably the innate immune system. The advent of novel genome editing technologies, such as the CRISPR-Cas9 syst ...

EPFL2023

The Effects of Spatial Organization and Fluid Flow on the Social Interactions in Microbial Communities

Jeremy Pak Hei Wong

Bacteria often engage in social interactions with neighbouring bacteria. Ecosystems which are subjected to social interactions have been widely studied in well mixed settings such as test tubes, allowing us to identify the cellular components contributing ...

EPFL2023

Photobiology and metabolic interactions in the symbiotic jellyfish Cassiopea

Niclas Heidelberg Lyndby

The symbiont-bearing jellyfish Cassiopea live a benthic lifestyle, positioning themselves upside-down on sediments in shallow waters to allow their endosymbiotic algae to photosynthesize in the sunlight. Over the last decades Cassiopea has become increasin ...

EPFL2023

The role of the NF-kappaB pathway in Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pathogenesis

Emma Charlotta Källstig

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative motor disorder, which results in death within a few years of diagnosis. While the cause of most cases of ALS is unknown, 10% of cases are familial (fALS), and associated with mutations in one of ov ...

EPFL2023

Puckered and JNK signaling in pioneer neurons coordinates the motor activity of the Drosophila embryo

Samuel William Vernon

Central nervous system organogenesis is a complex process that obeys precise architectural rules. The impact that nervous system architecture may have on its functionality remains, however, relatively unexplored. To clarify this problem, we analyze the dev ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Compartmentalized PGRP expression along the dipteran Bactrocera dorsalis gut forms a zone of protection for symbiotic bacteria

Ping Zhang, Bruno Lemaitre, Yichen Wang

All metazoan guts are subject to opposing pressures wherein the immune system must eliminate pathogens while tolerating the presence of symbiotic microbiota. The Imd pathway is an essential defense against invading pathogens in insect guts, but tolerance m ...

Cell Press2022

Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Gut-Brain Ecosystem in a Model of Alzheimer's Disease

Arielle Louise Planchette

The search for an understanding of the causal elements that lead to neurodegenerative diseases has motivated researchers for decades. Today, Alzheimer's disease is the most prevalent form of dementia and affects approximately fifty million people worldwide ...

EPFL2022

Targeted search for scaling genes reveals matrix metalloproteinase 3 as a scaler of the dorsal-ventral pattern in Xenopus laevis embryos

Daria Korotkova

How embryos scale patterning according to size is still not fully understood. Through in silico screening and analysis of reaction-diffusion systems that could be responsible for scaling, we predicted the existence of genes whose expression is sensitive to ...

Cell Press - Elsevier2022

A systematic CRISPR approach to understanding the role of Drosophila antimicrobial peptides in immunity in vivo

Mark Austin Hanson

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are host-encoded antibiotics that combat invading microbes. These short immune effectors are conserved in plants, animals, and fungi. Early work showed that AMPs killed bacteria in generalist fashions in vitro: i.e. AMPs that ...

EPFL2022

Contrasting Microbiome Dynamics of Putative Denitrifying Bacteria in Two Octocoral Species Exposed to Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) and Warming

Nils Rädecker, Claudia Isabella Pogoreutz

Mutualistic nutrient cycling in the coral-algae symbiosis depends on limited nitrogen (N) availability for algal symbionts. Denitrifying prokaryotes capable of reducing nitrate or nitrite to dinitrogen could thus support coral holobiont functioning by limi ...

2022

Rapid molecular evolution of Spiroplasma symbionts of Drosophila

Bruno Lemaitre, Florent François Masson

Spiroplasma is a genus of Mollicutes whose members include plant pathogens, insect pathogens and endosymbionts of animals. Spiroplasma phenotypes have been repeatedly observed to be spontaneously lost in Drosophila cultures, and several studies have docume ...

2021

The role of immune effectors in controlling Drosophila-microbes interactions

Alice Marra

All live beings are in constant interaction with microorganisms that may be beneficial, deleterious or commensal. Insects in particular live in close contact with microorganisms. This is especially true for species, like the fruit fly Drosophila melanogast ...

EPFL2021

Dual proteomics of Drosophila melanogaster hemolymph infected with the heritable endosymbiont Spiroplasma poulsonii

Bruno Lemaitre, Fanny Schüpfer, Samuel Rommelaere, Florent François Masson, Alice Marra

Insects are frequently infected with heritable bacterial endosymbionts. Endosymbionts have a dramatic impact on their host physiology and evolution. Their tissue distribution is variable with some species being housed intracellularly, some extracellularly ...

2021

Blind killing of both male and female Drosophila embryos by a natural variant of the endosymbiotic bacterium Spiroplasma poulsonii

Bruno Lemaitre, Juan Camilo Paredes Escobar, Mario Gonzalo Garcia Arraez, Samuel Rommelaere, Florent François Masson

Spiroplasma poulsonii is a vertically transmitted endosymbiont of Drosophila melanogaster that causes male-killing, that is the death of infected male embryos during embryogenesis. Here, we report a natural variant of S. poulsonii that is efficiently verti ...

WILEY2020

Transformation of the Drosophila Sex-Manipulative Endosymbiont Spiroplasma poulsonii and Persisting Hurdles for Functional Genetic Studies

Bruno Lemaitre, Florent François Masson, Chloé Christiane Laurence Jollivet

Insects are frequently infected by bacterial symbionts that greatly affect their physiology and ecology. Most of these endosymbionts are, however, barely tractable outside their native host, rendering functional genetics studies difficult or impossible. Sp ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2020

Unequal cleavage of the C. elegans zygote ensures robust embryogenesis

Radek Jankele

Asymmetric cell divisions play key roles in generating cellular diversity during embryogenesis, and in tissue homeostasis during postembryonic life. Particular asymmetric cell divisions producing differentially sized daughter cells were described in many s ...

EPFL2020

Sub-cellular imaging shows reduced photosynthetic carbon and increased nitrogen assimilation by the non-native endosymbiontDurusdinium trenchiiin the model cnidarian Aiptasia

Anders Meibom

Hosting different symbiont species can affect inter-partner nutritional fluxes within the cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbiosis. Using nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS), we measured the spatial incorporation of photosynthetically fixed(13)C ...

WILEY2020

Tracking the cargo of extracellular symbionts into host tissues with correlated electron microscopy and nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry imaging

Anders Meibom, Stéphane Laurent Escrig, Stéphanie Kéren Cohen

Extracellular bacterial symbionts communicate biochemically with their hosts to establish niches that foster the partnership. Using quantitative ion microprobe isotopic imaging (nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry [NanoSIMS]), we surveyed localizatio ...

WILEY2020