Dual comprehensive approach to decipher the Drosophila Toll pathway, ex vivo RNAi screenings and immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry

The utility of Drosophila melanogaster as a fungal infection model

Invasive fungal diseases have profound effects upon human health and are on increase globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2022 published the fungal priority list calling for improved public health interventions and advance research. Drosophila melanogaster presents an excellent model system to dissect host-pathogen interactions and has been proved valuable to study immunopathogenesis of fungal diseases. In this review we highlight the recent advances in fungal-Drosophila interplay with an emphasis on the recently published WHO's fungal priority list and we focus on available tools and technologies.

Maintaining Toll signaling in Drosophila brain is required to sustain autophagy for dopamine neuron survival

Macroautophagy/autophagy is a conserved process in eukaryotic cells to degrade and recycle damaged intracellular components. Higher level of autophagy in the brain has been observed, and autophagy dysfunction has an impact on neuronal health, but the molecular mechanism is unclear. In this study, we showed that overexpression of Toll-1 and Toll-7 receptors, as well as active Spätzle proteins in Drosophila S2 cells enhanced autophagy, and Toll-1/Toll-7 activated autophagy was dependent on Tube-Pelle-PP2A. Interestingly, Toll-1 but not Toll-7 mediated autophagy was dMyd88 dependent. Importantly, we observed that loss of functions in Toll-1 and Toll-7 receptors and PP2A activity in flies decreased autophagy level, resulting in the loss of dopamine (DA) neurons and reduced fly motion. Our results indicated that proper activation of Toll-1 and Toll-7 pathways and PP2A activity in the brain are necessary to sustain autophagy level for DA neuron survival.

Drosophila as a Model Organism in Host-Pathogen Interaction Studies

Owing to the genetic similarities and conserved pathways between a fruit fly and mammals, the use of the Drosophila model as a platform to unveil novel mechanisms of infection and disease progression has been justified and widely instigated. Gaining proper insight into host-pathogen interactions and identifying chief factors involved in host defense and pathogen virulence in Drosophila serves as a foundation to establish novel strategies for infectious disease prevention and control in higher organisms, including humans.