Talk:Application of Wolbachia in Invertebrate Vector Control

Comment by Anthony Alexander

The concept of using this alpha-proteobacteria to fight vector-born infectious diseases is extremely interesting. The reduction of vector-born infections causing death by up to 90% as suggested would be a great accomplishment. I think you do a good job of providing a substantial amount of information regarding the spread, impact and abilities of Wolbachia pipientis, however the information provided does leave me wanting more. For instance, the vertical transfer of Wolbachia is emphasized, but is there any insight as to how this infection originated? Also, what is the pathway of horizontal transmission? It is stated a number of times and in a number of ways that Wolbachia essentially is selective for females and is passed on through females. I find this surprising that this would have evolved and can be used in fighting vector-born diseases when in most cases, the females of species like mosquitoes are the ones that bight and infect humans. This leads me to my last question, which is, is the development/cause of early death in carriers the only way in which Wolbachia could be able to prevent the spread of vector-born diseases? Good job, your page has sparked a greater interest for this area of research for me.

Introduction

You say: “Wolbachia forms either an obligate or a facultative relationship with its host, and these interactions have many effects.” As if you are going to describe those effects in the following sentence but then you never do so. I understand that you are trying to introduce these ideas, however maybe you can rephrase this sentence so that it flows better with the following sentence. 

You could combine these two sentences “Wolbachia is primarily transmitted within invertebrates by two means. The natural transmission of Wolbachia can be either vertical or horizontal.” What type of horizontal transmission? Physiological and reproductive effects of Wolbachia What is Dengue Fever? In your second paragraph you talk about females receiving antibiotics what species or family are these females from? “To Wolbachia the males in a population are unimportant to Wolbachia because the male sperm cells are too small to harbor the bacterial cells for propagation.” In this sentence you can remove the second to wolbachia How does decrease in sperm of males benefit the Wolbachia, why would they infect the males at all? Is wMelpop uses cytoplasmic incompatibility, how does it relate to the rest of the topic? Do the grey lines in figure one show that tetracycline prevents early cell death? Also for figure one it appears that more females die faster when infected with Wolbachia than males why would that be? Overall a very interesting and well written paper on Wolbachia. It will be interesting to see if this microbe will be used in medicine to prevent diseases.