Thank you so much!

There is an example of a fungus with a bacterial endosymbiont that is required for fungal sporulation. The fungus can be cured of the endosymbiont, and the bacterium can afterwards be reintroduced in the laboratory:

Partida-Martinez et al. 2007, Current Biology 17, 773–777, DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2007.03.039

Here is an interesting application ("Towards a Synthetic Chloroplast"):

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018877

From the discussion section of the article:

"We show that photosynthetic bacteria can be engineered to invade and divide inside mammalian cells for use as a platform for further engineering or study of evolutionary dynamics of endosymbiosis."

This article also cites other examples of engineered endosymbiotic relationships.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018877

A couple of year ago I attended a talk by Scott O'Neill from Monash University in Australia. They were introducing bacteria of the Wolbachia genus, a normal "symbiont" of several insect species in the Aedes mosquito, a vector for dengue fever. The reason is that it can actually compromise the viability of the host species.

Mosquitos were refractory to taking the bacteria, so they introduced it in cultured mosquito cells, allowing several months for the bacteria to get used to the cellular environment, and then to the whole animal.

Then they did field tests in mosquito populations. I wouldn´t be difficult to find the paper where they describe it.

Ibo

Dear all, just for convenience (not exhaustive):

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/206/21/3809.short

doi: 10.1242/jeb.00609 November 1, 2003J Exp Biol 206, 3809-3816.

REVIEW ARTICLE

doi: 10.1242/ jeb.00609 November 1, 2003 J Exp Biol 206, 3809-3816.

Towards genetic manipulation of wild mosquito populations to combat malaria: advances and challenges

Michael A. Riehle, Prakash Srinivasan, Cristina K. Moreira and Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965174805000627

Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Volume 35, Issue 7, July 2005, Pages 699–707

Genetic manipulation of insects Using bacteria to express and display anti-parasite molecules in mosquitoes: current and future strategies

Michael A. Riehle, Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena

http://aem.asm.org/content/75/10/3373.full

Published ahead of print 27 March 2009, doi:10.1128/AEM.00207-09 Appl. Environ. Microbiol. May 2009 vol. 75 no. 10 3373-3376

The Virulent Wolbachia Strain wMelPop Efficiently Establishes Somatic Infections in the Malaria Vector Anopheles gambiae

Chaoyang Jin , Xiaoxia Ren and Jason L. Rasgon

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20368968

http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1000833

or: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848556/

The Endosymbiotic Bacterium Wolbachia Induces Resistance to Dengue Virus in Aedes aegypti

Guowu Bian, Yao Xu, Peng Lu, Yan Xie, Zhiyong Xi

Published: April 01, 2010

DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1000833

citation in Ref’s:

Hedges LM, Brownlie JC, O'Neill SL, Johnson KN (2008) Wolbachia and virus protection in insects. Science 322: 702. doi: 10.1126/science.1162418

• View Article PubMed/NCBI Google Scholar

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v19/n8/full/nm.3298.html (PPV)

NATURE MEDICINE | COMMUNITY CORNER

Modulating malaria with Wolbachia

Nature Medicine 19, 974–975 (2013), doi:10.1038/nm.3298 (10 Lit. ref’s are open access)

Why lab setting? You can find plenty of examples from nature itself, many bacteria can infect a living cell eg. Coxiella, Ehrlichia etc.