Fly vs. wasp: Stealing a defense move helps thwart a predator

University of California, Berkeley biologists have shown that several species of fruit fly have stolen a successful defense from bacteria to survive predation by parasitic wasps.

The discovery shows that horizontal gene transfer may be more common in animals that people thought.

Understanding how these genes are co-opted and shared can help scientists understand the evolution of animal immune defenses.

Researchers find bacteria that infects the bacteria that live inside an aphid.

The bacteriophage gene, expressed by the bacteria, makes the aphid resistant to a parasitic wasp that plagues it.

When researchers used gene editing to express the toxin gene in all cells of Drosophila ananassae, all the flies died.

When Tarnopol expressed the gene only in certain immune cells, the fly became resistant to parasites.

Current Biology , 2024 ; DOI: 10.1016 /j.cub.2024.071.

Experimental horizontal transfer of phage-derived genes to Drosophila confers innate immunity to parasitoids.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology .