Horizontal gene transfer-mediated bacterial strain variation affects host fitness in Drosophila.

Background: How microbes affect host fitness and environmental adaptation has become a fundamental research question in evolutionary biology. To better understand the role of microbial genomic variation for host fitness, we tested for associations of bacterial genomic variation and Drosophila melanogaster offspring number in a microbial Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS).

Results: We performed a microbial GWAS, leveraging strain variation in the genus Gluconobacter, a genus of bacteria that are commonly associated with Drosophila under natural conditions.