title: The wMelPop strain of Wolbachia interferes with dopamine levels in Aedes aegypti.
abstract: Wolbachia is an intracellular bacterium that has been stably transinfected into the mosquito vector of dengue, Aedes aegypti. This inherited infection causes a range of metabolic and phenotypic alterations in the mosquito, which might be related to neuronal abnormalities. In order to determine if these alterations were caused by the manipulation of neuroamines by this bacterium, we studied the expression of genes involved in the dopamine biosynthetic pathway and also measured the amount of dopamine in infected and uninfected mosquitoes of different ages. Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes exhibit greater expression of some genes related to the melanization pathway, but not for those directly linked to dopamine production. Although dopamine levels were higher in Wolbachia-positive mosquitoes this was not consistent across all insect ages nor was it related to the previously described Wolbachia induced "bendy" and "shaky" phenotypes.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane Qld 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Luciano A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Moreira
authors.forename: Yixin H
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Karly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: Darryl W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Eyles
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: McGraw
authors.forename: Scott L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: O'Neill
mesh_terms: D000330:Aedes / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D053898:Biosynthetic Pathways; D004298:Dopamine / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D020577:Wolbachia / Q000472:pathogenicity*
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine