Antimicrobial Peptides Keep Insect Endosymbionts Under Control

作者：Frédéric H. Login, Séverine Balmand, Agnès Vallier, Carole Vincent-Monégat, Aurélien Vigneron, Michèle Weiss‐Gayet, Didier Rochat, Abdelaziz Heddi · 发表于：Science · 年份：2011 · DOI：10.1126/science.1209728 · 被引用次数：375 · 研究领域：Insect symbiosis and bacterial influences、Insect and Pesticide Research、Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior

Vertically transmitted endosymbionts persist for millions of years in invertebrates and play an important role in animal evolution. However, the functional basis underlying the maintenance of these long-term resident bacteria is unknown. We report that the weevil coleoptericin-A (ColA) antimicrobial peptide selectively targets endosymbionts within the bacteriocytes and regulates their growth through the inhibition of cell division. Silencing the colA gene with RNA interference resulted in a decrease in size of the giant filamentous endosymbionts, which escaped from the bacteriocytes and spread into insect tissues. Although this family of peptides is commonly linked with microbe clearance, this work shows that endosymbiosis benefits from ColA, suggesting that long-term host-symbiont coevolution might have shaped immune effectors for symbiont maintenance.