title: Detection and Localization of Wolbachia in Thrips palmi Karny (Thysanoptera: Thripidae).
abstract: Thrips palmi Karny is a globally distributed polyphagous agricultural pest. It causes huge economic loss by its biological behaviors like feeding, reproduction and transmission of tospoviruses. Since T. palmi shows close morphological similarities with other thrips species, we employed mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase 1 (mtCO1) gene as a molecular marker. BLAST analysis of this sequence helped us to identify the collected specimen as T. palmi. We observed the female to male ratio of about 3:1 from collected samples and suspected the presence of Wolbachia. The presence of Wolbachia was detected by PCR using genus specific primers of 16S rRNA gene. Further confirmation of Wolbachia strain was achieved by conducting PCR amplification of three ubiquitous genes ftsZ, gatB and groEL. A phylogenetic tree was constructed with concatenated sequences of ftsZ and gatB gene to assign supergroup to Wolbachia. Finally, we localized Wolbachia in abdominal region of the insect using fluorescent in situ hybridization with the help of confocal microscope. Our result confirmed the presence of Wolbachia supergroup B strain for the first time in T. palmi.
authors: Gut Biology Laboratory, Room No. 117, Department of Zoology, University of Delhi, Delhi, 110007 India.
authors: Gunjan Kumar
authors: GK
authors: Saurav
authors: Gut Biology Laboratory, Room No. 117, Department of Zoology, University of Delhi, Delhi, 110007 India.
authors: Guisuibou
authors: G
authors: Daimei
authors: Gut Biology Laboratory, Room No. 117, Department of Zoology, University of Delhi, Delhi, 110007 India.
authors: Vipin Singh
authors: VS
authors: Rana
authors: Gut Biology Laboratory, Room No. 117, Department of Zoology, University of Delhi, Delhi, 110007 India.
authors: Sonam
authors: S
authors: Popli
authors: Gut Biology Laboratory, Room No. 117, Department of Zoology, University of Delhi, Delhi, 110007 India.
authors: Raman
authors: R
authors: Rajagopal
keywords: 16S rRNA gene; FISH; PCR; Ubiquitous genes; mtCO1 gene