Black Widow Spider - Blog Posts

Virus carrying DNA of black widow spider toxin discovered

A tiny virus that may sting like a black widow spider.

That is one of the surprise discoveries made by a pair of Vanderbilt biologists when they sequenced the genome of a virus that attacks Wolbachia, a bacterial parasite that has successfully infected not only black widow spiders but more than half of all arthropod species, which include insects, spiders and crustaceans.

“Discovering DNA related to the black widow spider toxin gene came as a total surprise because it is the first time that a phage – a virus that infects bacteria – has been found carrying animal-like DNA,” said Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Seth Bordenstein. He and Senior Research Specialist Sarah Bordenstein reported the results of their study in a paper titled “Eukaryotic association module in phage WO genomes from Wolbachia” published Oct. 11 in the journal Nature Communications.

Sarah R. Bordenstein, Seth R. Bordenstein. Eukaryotic association module in phage WO genomes from Wolbachia. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 13155 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13155

DNA related to black widow spider toxin has been found in a bacterial virus. (iStock)

The oval shape in this electron microphotograph is a Wolbachia bacterium that has infected a Nasonia wasp. The small dots in the bacterium are WO phage particles. The inset shows them at a higher magnification. The white arrows in the inset point to the phage tails. The scale bar in the image is 200 nm and the bar in he inset is 100 nm. (Bordenstein Lab / Vanderbilt)