Symbiotic bracovirus of a parasite manipulates host lipid metabolism via tachykinin signaling

Abstract

Parasites alter host energy homeostasis for their own development, but the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain largely unknown. Here, we show that Cotesia vestalis, an endoparasitic wasp of Plutella xylostella larvae, stimulates a reduction of host lipid levels. This process requires excess secretion of P. xylostella tachykinin (PxTK) peptides from enteroendocrine cells (EEs) in the midgut of the parasitized host larvae. We found that parasitization upregulates PxTK signaling to suppress lipogenesis in midgut enterocytes (ECs) in a non-cell-autonomous manner, and the reduced host lipid level benefits the development of wasp offspring and their subsequent parasitic ability. We further found that a C. vestalis bracovirus (CvBV) gene, CvBV 9–2, is responsible for PxTK induction, which in turn reduces the systemic lipid level of the host. Taken together, these findings illustrate a novel mechanism for parasite manipulation of host energy homeostasis by a symbiotic bracovirus gene to promote the development and increase the parasitic efficiency of an agriculturally important wasp species.

Genome-Wide Identification of Neuropeptides and Their Receptors in an Aphid Endoparasitoid Wasp, Aphidius gifuensi

“…Furthermore, tachykinin is one of the most abundant secreted peptides expressed in midgut EEs [55]. In D. melanogaster and Plutella xylostella, tachykinin has been found to play a critical role in lipid metabolism [55,58]. Therefore, we speculate that the absence of some neuropeptide precursors might be due to a method as some specific neuropeptide genes that might not be identified by homolog searching.…”

Parasite reliance on its host gut microbiota for nutrition and survival

“…For example, Toxoplasma gondii secures cellular fatty acids essential for its proliferation [20]. While parasitoid wasps are unable to de novo synthesize lipids [15] and thus rely on host lipid metabolism to meet dietary needs for development into adults [21,23,65]. In this study, we identify a developmental strategy whereby Lb allows the host to grow to the pupal stage, but its development into adults also depends on increased lipid accumulation in fat body cells of hosts that wasp larvae consume.…”

Detection of Centistes sp. (Hymenoptera, Braconidae) from intercepted Diabrotica undecimpunctata (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae) using CO1 DNA barcodes and larval morphology

“…Transfer of genes from the mitochondria to the nucleus, which is known for CO1 in several parasitoid wasps (Viljakainen et al 2010;Yan et al 2019), might also explain increases in CO1 read number between parasitoid and host by increasing the total number of CO1 copies per cell. Lastly a wide variety of parasitoid induced alterations of host metabolism have been described (Mrinalini et al 2015;Wang et al 2021) and may in turn affect the copy number of host mitochondria.…”