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Utility of Insects for Studying Human Pathogens and Evaluating New Antimicrobial Agents

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Book cover Yellow Biotechnology I

Part of the book series: Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology ((ABE,volume 135))

Abstract

Insect models, such as Galleria mellonella and Drosophila melanogaster have significant ethical, logistical, and economic advantages over mammalian models for the studies of infectious diseases. Using these models, various pathogenic microbes have been studied and many novel virulence genes have been identified. Notably, because insects are susceptible to a wide variety of human pathogens and have immune responses similar to those of mammals, they offer the opportunity to understand innate immune responses against human pathogens better. It is important to note that insect pathosystems have also offered a simple strategy to evaluate the efficacy and toxicity of many antimicrobial agents. Overall, insect models provide a rapid, inexpensive, and reliable way as complementary hosts to conventional vertebrate animal models to study pathogenesis and antimicrobial agents.

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Abbreviations

MRSA:

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

RNAi:

RNA interference

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health through an R01 award (AI075286) and an R21 award (AI070569) to Eleftherios Mylonakis, and National Natural Science Foundation of China (81273558, 81072678) to Yan Wang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. New Drug Research and Development Center, School of Pharmacy, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Yan Wang, De-Dong Li & Yuan-Ying Jiang

  2. Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Yan Wang & Eleftherios Mylonakis

  3. Division of Infectious Diseases, Rhode Island Hospital, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Rhode Island, 02903, USA

    Eleftherios Mylonakis

Authors
  1. Yan Wang
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  2. De-Dong Li
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  3. Yuan-Ying Jiang
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  4. Eleftherios Mylonakis
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yan Wang or Eleftherios Mylonakis .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Inst. for Molec. Biol. IME Project Group "Bioresources", Giessen, Germany

    Andreas Vilcinskas

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Wang, Y., Li, DD., Jiang, YY., Mylonakis, E. (2013). Utility of Insects for Studying Human Pathogens and Evaluating New Antimicrobial Agents. In: Vilcinskas, A. (eds) Yellow Biotechnology I. Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology, vol 135. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/10_2013_194

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