Male-killing bacteria in a parasitic wasp.

A rod-shaped bacterium has been isolated that kills male eggs of the wasp Nasonia vitripennis, a pupal parasite of flies. Only some wasps of this species express this son-killer trait, and these wasps have bacterial infections in various organs. The bacterium was isolated from son-killer wasp tissue and from the hemolymph of fly pupae parasitized by wasps expressing the son-killer trait. Bacteria are apparently transferred to parasitized fly pupae during wasp oviposition, and developing wasp offspring are subsequently infected perorally. Sex-ratio distortion by microorganisms is found in a variety of plants and animals. The infectious peroral transmission of this trait variety of plants and animals. The infectious peroral transmission of this trait is in contrast to the typical pattern of cytoplasmic inheritance of sex-ratio distortion in these other systems.

The cellular substrate: a very important requirement for baculovirus in vitro replication.

We established more than 200 primary cell lines of Cydia pomonella (coding moth). 81 of them were selected and screened for replication of two baculoviruses (from two different subgroups): the Choristoneura murinana NPV and the Cydia pomonella GV. Although all these cell lines had been derived from the same insect species, they varied largely in their response to challenge with the NPV. Most of them showed CPE or produced different amounts of polyhedra. Interestingly, we also found a few cell lines that were permissive for GV replication. To our knowledge this is the first time that GV replication in cell lines has been obtained. Our results show that cell line properties are most important for baculovirus in vitro replication.