Bacterial infection promotes transposable element activation in Drosophila species
Authors: Sabrina Mostoufi; Nadia Singh
Affiliation: University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Keywords: u. other (Transposable elements); l. Wolbachia
Transposable elements (TEs) are short, repetitive sections of ancient viral DNA capable of inserting themselves into new parts of a genome. This ability has allowed TEs to invade the genomes of nearly all organisms, where they make up 5-75% of the genomes of plants, animals, and bacteria. TE activation can also affect gene expression, mutation, and recombination, making them powerful contributors to the evolutionary process. Stressful stimuli can cause TE activation to increase, creating another link between TEs and evolution. Infection can be a particularly stressful event for organisms, leading to a cascade of gene expression changes. Several studies have illustrated that infection can cause increased TE expression, but it is unclear how these processes differ between host species and pathogen species. Here we test the hypothesis that infection causes elevated TE expression in Drosophila species and investigate how pathogen species influences that expression. We analyzed several RNA-seq datasets of varying Drosophila species, infection types (bacterial, fungal, viral), and tissue types. Our results find that infection status is significantly associated with TE expression, but that the magnitude of that effect depends on host species and infection type.