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A Tangled Web: Origins Of Reproductive Parasitism, Joseph J. Gillespie, Timothy P. Driscoll, Victoria I. Verhoeve, Mohammed Sayeedur Rahman, Kevin R. Macaluso
A Tangled Web: Origins Of Reproductive Parasitism, Joseph J. Gillespie, Timothy P. Driscoll, Victoria I. Verhoeve, Mohammed Sayeedur Rahman, Kevin R. Macaluso
Faculty & Staff Scholarship
While typically a flea parasite and opportunistic human pathogen, the presence of Rickettsia felis (strain LSU-Lb) in the non-blood- feeding, parthenogenetically reproducing booklouse, Liposcelis bostrychophila, provides a system to ascertain factors governing not only host transitions but also obligate reproductive parasitism (RP). Analysis of plasmid pLbAR, unique to R. felis str. LSU-Lb, revealed a toxin–antitoxin module with similar features to prophage-encoded toxin–antitoxin modules utilized by parasitic Wolbachia strains to induce another form of RP, cytoplasmic incompatibility, in their arthropod hosts. Curiously, multiple deubiquitinase and nuclease domains of the large (3,841 aa) pLbAR toxin, as well the entire antitoxin, facilitated the …