In this study, the authors confirmed that two WsnRNAs in Wolbachia can be exported to mosquitoes and drosophila. One of the target genes of the WsnRNAs in mosquitoes is a Dynein protein, which affects the replication of Wolbachia by means of the mosquito microtubule system.
The research ideas of this article is as follows: initially they found cross-kingdom WsnRNAs through high-throughput sequencing; further screening to verify two WsnRNAs which may participate in cross-kingdom communication with serious possibility; the genomic area generating these two WsnRNAs; these two WsnRNAs are conservative in different Wolbachia strain and the diversity of the infected hosts with these two WsnRNAs; the two WsnRNAs target some genes in Wolbachia; verifying one snRNA targeting host target genes.
For the bioinformatic analysis of cross-kingdom small RNA in this paper, there are some criteria that we can use as a reference. The clean sequencing reads must be mapped to Wolbachia genome. The reads should be detected in the infected samples but not in the uninfected samples. And the cross-kingdom WsnRNAs can target genes in the host.
Most intriguingly, these two WsnRNAs inhibited the expression of target genes in Wolbachia, but increased the expression of targeted genes in the host.
