Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans

Candida spp. are opportunistic pathogens in humans, and their systemic infections display upwards of 30% mortality in immunocompromised patients. Current mammalian model systems have certain disadvantages in that obtaining results is time consuming owing to the relatively long life spans and these r...

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Main Authors:	Glittenberg, Marcus T., Silas, Sukrit, MacCallum, Donna M., Gow, Neil A. R., Ligoxygakis, Petros
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	The Company of Biologists Limited 2011
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124057/

id	pubmed-3124057
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-31240572011-07-02 Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans Glittenberg, Marcus T. Silas, Sukrit MacCallum, Donna M. Gow, Neil A. R. Ligoxygakis, Petros Research Article Candida spp. are opportunistic pathogens in humans, and their systemic infections display upwards of 30% mortality in immunocompromised patients. Current mammalian model systems have certain disadvantages in that obtaining results is time consuming owing to the relatively long life spans and these results have low statistical resolution because sample sizes are usually small. We have therefore evaluated the potential of Drosophila melanogaster as an additional model system with which to dissect the host-pathogen interactions that occur during Candida albicans systemic infection. To do this, we monitored the survival of wild-type flies infected with various C. albicans clinical isolates that were previously ranked for murine virulence. From our lifetime data we computed two metrics of virulence for each isolate. These correlated significantly with murine survival, and were also used to group the isolates, and this grouping made relevant predictions regarding their murine virulence. Notably, differences in virulence were not predictably resolvable using immune-deficient spz−/− flies, suggesting that Toll signalling might actually be required to predictably differentiate virulence. Our analysis reveals wild-type D. melanogaster as a sensitive and relevant model system; one that offers immense genetic tractability (having an extensive RNA interference library that enables tissue-specific gene silencing), and that is easy to manipulate and culture. Undoubtedly, it will prove to be a valuable addition to the model systems currently used to study C. albicans infection. The Company of Biologists Limited 2011-07 2011-05-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3124057/ /pubmed/21540241 http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/dmm.006619 Text en © 2011. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly cited and all further distributions of the work or adaptation are subject to the same Creative Commons License terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Glittenberg, Marcus T. Silas, Sukrit MacCallum, Donna M. Gow, Neil A. R. Ligoxygakis, Petros
spellingShingle	Glittenberg, Marcus T. Silas, Sukrit MacCallum, Donna M. Gow, Neil A. R. Ligoxygakis, Petros Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans
author_facet	Glittenberg, Marcus T. Silas, Sukrit MacCallum, Donna M. Gow, Neil A. R. Ligoxygakis, Petros
author_sort	Glittenberg, Marcus T.
title	Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans
title_short	Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans
title_full	Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans
title_fullStr	Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans
title_full_unstemmed	Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans
title_sort	wild-type drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of candida albicans
description	Candida spp. are opportunistic pathogens in humans, and their systemic infections display upwards of 30% mortality in immunocompromised patients. Current mammalian model systems have certain disadvantages in that obtaining results is time consuming owing to the relatively long life spans and these results have low statistical resolution because sample sizes are usually small. We have therefore evaluated the potential of Drosophila melanogaster as an additional model system with which to dissect the host-pathogen interactions that occur during Candida albicans systemic infection. To do this, we monitored the survival of wild-type flies infected with various C. albicans clinical isolates that were previously ranked for murine virulence. From our lifetime data we computed two metrics of virulence for each isolate. These correlated significantly with murine survival, and were also used to group the isolates, and this grouping made relevant predictions regarding their murine virulence. Notably, differences in virulence were not predictably resolvable using immune-deficient spz−/− flies, suggesting that Toll signalling might actually be required to predictably differentiate virulence. Our analysis reveals wild-type D. melanogaster as a sensitive and relevant model system; one that offers immense genetic tractability (having an extensive RNA interference library that enables tissue-specific gene silencing), and that is easy to manipulate and culture. Undoubtedly, it will prove to be a valuable addition to the model systems currently used to study C. albicans infection.
publisher	The Company of Biologists Limited
publishDate	2011
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124057/
_version_	1611462331786592256

Wild-type Drosophila melanogaster as an alternative model system for investigating the pathogenicity of Candida albicans

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