Genome sequence of Wolbachia strains wCer1, wCer4 and wCer5

There are five Wolbachia strains native to the tephritid fruit fly Rhagoletis cerasi. While wCer1 is fixed in the species and is sometimes found as a single infection, wCer2, wCer4 and wCer5 often co-occur in different combinations with wCer1 in various populations. Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) is enacted by CifA and CifB genes: it is a phenotype of wCer2 and wCer4, with bidirectional incompatibility expressed between them; there is some indication that wCer1 also causes CI and at this stage it is unknown if wCer5 causes CI. The aim was to characterise the CI phenotype of wCer1, wCer4 and wCer5 through genome sequencing. The R. cerasi Wolbachia strains are each shown to have at least one theoretically functional cifA/B pair, plus additional cif pairs, which impacts on the population dynamics of this species.