Jeremy Brownlie of Griffıth University in Brisbane, Australia, talks with Jeff Fox about how bacteria influence aggressive behavior in an animal. Fruit flies infected with the wMelPop strain of Wolbachia were less aggressive than their uninfected peers. The neurotransmitter octopamine regulates fruit fly aggression, and Brownlie and his collaborators found that the infected flies produce less of the compound than their uninfected peers, and expression of two genes that encode enzymes responsible for producing octopamine are present at lower levels in infected flies. “That suggested that Wolbachia directly affects fruit fly gene function,” he says.

This story was featured in the September 2015 issue of Microbe magazine. 

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