Lepidopteran insects: emerging model organisms to study infection by enteropathogens
The in vivo analysis of a pathogen is a critical step in gaining greater knowledge of pathogen biology and host–pathogen interactions. In the last two decades, there has been a notable rise in the number of studies on developing insects as a model for studying pathogens, which provides various benef...
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Published in | Folia microbiologica Vol. 68; no. 2; pp. 181 - 196 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Dordrecht
Springer Netherlands
01.04.2023
Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The in vivo analysis of a pathogen is a critical step in gaining greater knowledge of pathogen biology and host–pathogen interactions. In the last two decades, there has been a notable rise in the number of studies on developing insects as a model for studying pathogens, which provides various benefits, such as ethical acceptability, relatively short life cycle, and cost-effective care and maintenance relative to routinely used rodent infection models. Furthermore, lepidopteran insects provide many advantages, such as easy handling and tissue extraction due to their large size relative to other invertebrate models, like
Caenorhabditis elegans
. Additionally, insects have an innate immune system that is highly analogous to vertebrates. In the present review, we discuss the components of the insect’s larval immune system, which strengthens its usage as an alternative host, and present an updated overview of the research findings involving lepidopteran insects (
Galleria mellonella
,
Manduca sexta
,
Bombyx mori
, and
Helicoverpa armigera
) as infection models to study the virulence by enteropathogens due to the homology between insect and vertebrate gut. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-3 content type line 23 ObjectType-Review-1 |
ISSN: | 0015-5632 1874-9356 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s12223-022-01014-y |