Wolbachia pipientis wMelPop Genome sequencing and assembly. Wolbachia pipientis wMelPop

The endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia pipientis typically has only mildly beneficial or mildy deleterious effects on its hosts. The strain wMelPop, however, over-replicates in its host, leading to pathogenesis and early host death. We have sequenced the genome of wMelPop and compared it to the genome of the closely related, non-pathogenic strain wMel.