Use of Drosophila for studying pathogen-insect interactions
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Drosophila melanogaster is widely used model insect in genetics, development and diseases research which includes functional homologs of many human genes. There are many advantages of using fruit fly - the culture in laboratory conditions is cheap and easy, they produce large numbers of eggs, have short life cycle, and they can be genetically modified in numerous ways. To study host-pathogen interactions we used Drosophila larvae naturally infected by entomopathogenic nematodes and their associated bacteria. This nematobacterial complex (Heterorhabditis/Photorhabdus or Steinernema/Xenorhabdus) is highly pathogenic and is able to invade and kill insect host within two days. Both bacteria and nematodes produce a variety of factors interacting with the insect immune system and help to overcome host defences. Microarray analysis was used to compare gene expression of Drosophila larvae infected by the entomopathogenic nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora and its symbiotic bacterium Photorhabdus luminescens with non-infected larvae. The role of candidate genes, selected based on genomic comparison, in response towards nematobacterial complex was further evaluated by in vivo infection assays using different Drosophila mutants or RNAi lines with defects in clotting or other branches of the immune system. We demonstrated an immune function during nematode infection for known clotting enzymes and substrates, recognition molecules and eicosanoids. In conclusion, we show that the tripartite infection model (Drosophila, nematodes, bacteria) is suitable to identify regulators of innate immunity in insects. Our research is supported by grant No. 17-03253S from the Czech Science Foundation. |
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