@conference{
author = "Vlajnić, Lea and Savković, Uroš and Stojković, Biljana and Pešić, Snežana and Vukajlović, Filip and Predojević, Dragana and Mitrovski Bogdanović, Ana and Đorđević, Mirko",
year = "2022",
abstract = "Uniparental inheritance of mitochondria leads to asymmetry of mtDNA evolution because
selection acts directly on non-neutral mtDNA polymorphisms only through the female
lineage. In other words, natural selection will not recognize any mtDNA mutation which is
male harming, but neutral, beneficial, or slightly deleterious for females. Ultimately, non-
Mendelian inheritance of mitochondria drives the evolution of male-specific mitochondrial
mutation loads, an idea known as mother’s curse. Naturally occurring mtDNA mutations
that impair male fertility, but have no effects on females, have been recognized as an
opportunity for the development of the biocontrol of pest species termed Trojan Female
Technique (TFT). Namely, females carrying TFT mutations, and their female
descendants, could continuously, over multiple generations, produce males that sire
fewer offspring than wild-type counterparts. Although the TFT shows promise as a transgenerational,
self-sustaining method, its empirical success hinges on the existence of
natural TFT mutations that remain uncharacterized in pest insects. In order to identify
and test possible TFT candidates for biological control of seed beetle, a common pest in
legume storages, three mtDNA haplotypes found in laboratory lines were expressed
alongside one outbred nuclear background. We analyzed the effects of specific
mitotypes on female and male life history traits, and found a male-only reduction in
fertility in one mito-nuclear combination. Specifically, fertility (but not total fecundity and
lifespan) of males carrying specific mtDNA variant was reduced by 35% relative to the
controls. Our study provides evidence that intergenomic conflict leads to the existence of
male-harming mtDNA mutations that segregate within populations.",
publisher = "European Society for Evolutionary Biology",
journal = "Book of Abstracts: Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology; 2022 Aug 14-19; Pague, Czech Republic",
title = "Mitochondrial variant specifically impairs male fertility in seed beetle Acanthoscelides obtectus",
pages = "204",
url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_ibiss_5031"
}
