Microbes, short for microorganisms, are tiny living things that are too small to see without a microscope, which include bacteria, virus and fungi.
Unlike lab research, this research shows that fruit flies have many different types of bacteria, suggesting new partnerships between the flies and microbes.
The research also reveals a wide variety of genes that could affect insect health, their ability to survive in the wild, and how they interact with their environment. This breakthrough opens exciting new opportunities to discover useful natural products from microbes that could benefit medicine and technology.
The team collected bacterial DNA by squashing and sequencing whole fruit flies, which helped them build over 100 detailed bacterial genomes. A genome is the genetic blueprint (made up of DNA) of a living thing. It contains the instructions that tell the organism how to grow, function, and survive.
The genomes analysed in this study helped the researchers understand what the bacteria might be doing inside the flies. They found that the bacteria can break down sugars and other things like methane and create chemicals that kill harmful germs.
These findings go against what researchers first thought from studying lab-raised flies and help better understand how insects and their microbes grow and change together in the wild.
Despite similarities, the bacteria found in fruit flies form distinct evolutionary clades, separate from those found in bees, implying potential co-evolution and adaptation specific to specific insect hosts.
Our study shows that the bacteria living with insects are more varied than we thought. We found new types of bacteria and learned about the jobs they do. Wild fruit flies have much more diverse and complex bacteria than people usually expect. The genomes we’ve generated for those bacteria provide a first step towards identifying the molecules they produce, and functions they perform.
