›› 2012, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (7): 782-789.doi:

• RESEARCH PAPERS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Establishment of singly Wolbachia- and singly Cardinium-infected whitebacked planthopper (Sogatella furcifera) lines by microinjecting penicillin G

ZHANG Xiang-Fei, ZHAO Dong-Xiao, HONG Xiao-Yue   

  • Received:2012-04-26 Revised:2012-06-25 Online:2012-07-20 Published:2012-07-20
  • Contact: HONG Xiao-Yue E-mail:xyhong@scau.edu.cn
  • About author:E-mail: 2009102083@njau.edu.cn

Abstract: Wolbachia and Cardinium are both maternally inherited intracellular bacteria that infect a wide range of arthropods and are associated with various reproductive abnormalities in their hosts. Infection with bothWolbachia and Cardinium is reasonably common, yet it is relatively difficult to find the individuals infected with single symbiont in doubly infected hosts naturally. In this study, Wolbachia and Cardinium were detected in two populations of the whitebacked planthopper, Sogatella furcifera (Horváth), collected from Wenshan of Yunnan (YN) and Sanya of Hainan (HN). Using the Hainan population of doubly infected S. furcifera as the material, we developed a new technique of microinjecting different concentrations of penicillin G into nymphs of the planthopper. The results showed that the rate of individuals infected with only Wolbachia was very low in natural populations of S. furcifera, and no singly Wolbachia-infected individual was found in the Hainan population. We got singly-infected individuals by using microinjection of penicillin G in the laboratory. The singly infected lines can be produced most efficiently by injecting 0.2% (w/v) penicillin G into the 5th instar nymphs. The result of PCR detection of F5 progenies showed that the singly infected lines obtained by microinjection can be inherited stably. These results here will provide a speedy method to get singly infected lines, and this method can be used to establish lines with different infection type for other arthropods doubly infected with Wolbachia and Cardinium.

Key words: Wolbachia, Cardinium, Sogatella furcifera, microinjection, penicillin G