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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Comparative Immunology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1474516
This article is part of the Research Topic Commending 20 Years Since the Formal Discovery of Immune Priming: The Innate Immune Memory View all 12 articles

Candida albicans infection model in Drosophila melanogaster suggests a strainspecific virulent factor boosting a stormy innate immune response

Provisionally accepted
Mariona Cortacans Mariona Cortacans 1,2,3,4Marta Arch Marta Arch 1,2,3,4Esther Fuentes Esther Fuentes 1,2,4Pere-Joan Cardona Pere-Joan Cardona 1,2,3,4,5*
  • 1 Servei de Microbiologia, LCMN, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol (HUGTiP), Badalona, Spain
  • 2 Unitat de Tuberculosi Experimental, Institut Germans Trias i Pujol, Badalona, Spain
  • 3 Genetics and Microbiology Department, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08913 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain., Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain
  • 4 Centre de Medicina Comparativa i Bioimatge de Catalunya (CMCiB), Badalona, Catalonia, Spain 08916, Badalona, Spain
  • 5 Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Respiratorias (CIBERES), 28029 Madrid, Spain, Madrid, Asturias, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Drosophila melanogaster experimental model allows to evaluate the role of innate immunity to control infections. In this study we have tested its capacity to modulate systemic infections with a clinical and a control ATCC 90028 Candida albicans strains. To do so, we have primed flies with oral administration of heat-killed C. albicans (hkCa), both clinical and control, and hk-Mycolicibacterium manresensis. Both treatments showed a significant capacity to enhance the expression of antimicrobial peptides, in particular Diptericin, and Drosomycin in males. This response had a marked sexual dimorphism due to the difference in Upd3, Nox, and Duox expression. Surprisingly, even when priming was able to avoid the growth of both C. albicans strains, survival was not improved in the case of the clinical isolate, causing an unexpected mortality rate in hours, regardless of the host’s sex. Gene expression analysis 24 hours post-infection showed an exacerbated increase in Diptericin, Drosomycin and Upd3 expression upon infection with the clinical strain. Data herein suggests the presence of a strain-specific component in C. albicans as the booster of a “stormy” innate immune response, which must be further investigated, and position D. melanogaster as a useful model for evaluating virulent factors related to the modulation of the innate immunity.

    Keywords: priming, innate immunity, Drosophila melanogaster, Infection, sexual dimorphism, pathogen load, -glucan, Environmental mycobacteria

    Received: 01 Aug 2024; Accepted: 09 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Cortacans, Arch, Fuentes and Cardona. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Pere-Joan Cardona, Servei de Microbiologia, LCMN, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol (HUGTiP), Badalona, Spain

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