Journal
INSECTS
Volume 11, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/insects11020105
Keywords
antimicrobial peptides; immune response; mealworm; spatzle; Toll pathway
Categories
Funding
- Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) - Ministry of Science, ICT, and future Planning [2018R1A2A2A05023367]
- National Research Foundation of Korea [2018R1A2A2A05023367] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)
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Spatzle is an extracellular protein that activates the Toll receptor during embryogenesis and immune responses in Drosophila. However, the functions of the spatzle proteins in the innate immune response against bacteria or fungi in T. molitor are not well understood. Therefore, in this study, the open reading frame (ORF) of TmSpz6 was identified and its function in the response to bacterial and fungal infections in T. molitor was investigated using RNAi. The highest expression of TmSpz6 was in prepupae, and 3- and 6-day-old pupae, while remarkable expression was also observed in other stages. The tissue-specific expression analysis showed that TmSpz6 expression was highest in the hemocytes of larvae. TmSpz6 expression was highly induced when challenged with Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, or Candida albicans at 6 h post-injection; however, TmSpz6-silenced larvae were significantly more susceptible to only E. coli and S. aureus infection. The antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) gene expression analysis results show that TmSpz6 mainly positively regulated the expression of TmTencin-2 and -3 in response to E. coli and S. aureus infection. Collectively, these results suggest that TmSpz6 plays an important role in regulating AMP expression and increases the survival of T. molitor against E. coli and S. aureus.
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