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The parasite will also evolve to maintain infection, otherwise parasites would not exist...


The hosts originally had their normal wild type gene regulation.

After infection one can approximate the novel gene regulation to be a combination of the host wild type gene regulation, perturbed by the Wolbachia gene regulatory network.

The metabolic rate of the Wolbachia will be a function of genome variations in the wild type population. The population (even if fully infected) thus has access to a whole bunch of knobs (promoter region binding affinities) and can continuously shed the metabolic burden of the parasite by natural selection, since 2 infected mosquitos, with differing levels of Wolbachia metabolism / reproduction, will have more energy and amino acids available for flight, healinig / repair, eggs, ... so that over a number of generations the Wolbachia incidence rate falls back to equilibrium levels. Then its a matter of time until a dormant virus or a one of the many virus particles scattered in nature and a mosquito meet again.




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