Inducible Antibacterial Defence System in Drosophila

How Drosophila combats microbial infection: a model to study innate immunity and host–pathogen interactions

“…Studies from several groups have clearly established the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as an attractive model host for the study of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella typhimurium pathogenesis [69,70]. P. aeruginosa has previously been shown to be highly pathogenic to Drosophila [71], and it is now the focus of several groups that use Drosophila as an alternative model system to study this important pathogen. Drosophila can be used to screen for P. aeruginosa mutants with reduced virulence and to analyse the complex interactions between this bacterium and the innate host defence response [72,73].…”

Antibacterial activity of secretolytin, a chromogranin B‐derived peptide (614–626), is correlated with peptide structure

“…peptides with very potent antibacterial activity, that were first isolated from the hemolymph of Drosophila [8], then from the giant silk moth, Hyalophora cecropia [9,10], and subsequently from a wide range of other insects [11]. Later, an antibacterial peptide with 33% homology to insect cecropins was isolated from porcine small intestine [12].…”

QscR, a modulator of quorum-sensing signal synthesis and virulence in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

“…To test this, we used an insect model for P. aeruginosa pathogenesis. We tested the role of QscR in virulence by feeding the mutant and parent to the fruit fly D. melanogaster; a particularly convenient model host among the various insects in which P. aeruginosa causes disease (21)(22)(23). We fed fruit flies with P. aeruginosa cells suspended in a sucrose solution (see Materials and Methods) and monitored the flies for 2 weeks.…”