I have a wpf application which I want to host on windows app store. I am thinking of using the desktop bridge to convert WPF to UWP without code changes. However, is it possible to make use of .net native compilation while using the desktop bridge approach in visual studio 2017???
No, this is not possible today for your WPF code - even with the Desktop Bridge. You can only do it for regular UWP projects that are targeting the .NET Core for UWP runtime.