Accepted_test

The transcriptome of Drosophila cells, like that of any other living organism, is tissue specific, very labile, and changes under the influence of a wide variety of biotic and abiotic factors. We investigated the effect of one of these factors — infection with the endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia, trying to standardize all conditions and the influence of other factors when collecting infected and control (non-infected) samples. Wolbachia is widely known for its ability to manipulate the host insect’s reproduction, successfully spreading through host’s populations; however, information about possible usefulness of this symbiosis to the host is still quite fragmentary and contradictory. We demonstrate that in Drosophila melanogaster the bacterium has significant effects on the expression of genes involved in embryogenesis, oxidation–reduction processes, digestion, carbohydrate transport and metabolism, as well as on the expression of several alkaline phosphatase genes. These changes are accompanied by an increase in fly body weight and contents of glucose, triglycerides and total lipids, correlating with an increased resistance of infected flies to starvation, which largely answers the question of the benefits of symbiosis with Wolbachia for D. melanogaster. It is noteworthy that, despite a slight increase in the expression level of alkaline phosphatase genes in infected flies, the activity of the corresponding enzyme in them was also significantly increased compared to the control, which indicates that even minor changes in the transcriptome can have a significant biochemical physiological effect.