Author:

Keywords:

Drosophila, Innate immunity

Abstract:

Two-dimensional proteomic analysis of the hemolymph of Drosophila melanogaster larvae challenged with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or with different pathogens identified many known or predicted as well as a plethora of uncharacterised proteins involved in the innate defence mechanism (Vierstraete E et al., 2003, 2004, 2005). Based on its strong upregulation in immune related proteomic and micro-array studies, the phosphatidylenthanolamine binding protein (PEBP) family member CG18594, was selected for further characterization. Despite the identification of PEBP homologues in a diversity of organisms, little is know about their physiological function. At this moment, we have homemade fly lines which can over/misexpres the PEBP homologue and we are testing our transgenic PEBP RNAi flies. We are also about to start the generation of knock out lines, making use of the ends-out gene targeting strategy developed by Gong and Golic (2003). Further studies will also include analysis with GFP - reporter flies for the various known immune signalling pathways and proteomic analysis of the overexpression, the RNAi and the knock out lines, with or without immune challenge. This will indicate in which aspect of the immune system our candidate is involved and will give directions for further epistatic evalution and functional analysis.