Research

Genome-wide gene expression in response to parasitoid attack in Drosophila

Bregje Wertheim^1,2 , Alex R Kraaijeveld² , Eugene Schuster³ , Eric Blanc³ , Meirion Hopkins² , Scott D Pletcher^1,4 , Michael R Strand⁵ , Linda Partridge¹ and H Charles J Godfray²

¹  Centre for Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Biology, University College London, Darwin Building, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK

²  NERC Centre for Population Biology, Division of Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK

³  European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK

⁴  Huffington Center on Aging and Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030, USA

⁵  Department of Entomology, 420 Biological Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-2603, USA

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2005, 6:R94doi:10.1186/gb-2005-6-11-r94

Published:	31 October 2005

Subject areas: Immunology, Microbiology and parasitology

Abstract

Background

Parasitoids are insect parasites whose larvae develop in the bodies of other insects. The main immune defense against parasitoids is encapsulation of the foreign body by blood cells, which subsequently often melanize. The capsule sequesters and kills the parasite. The molecular processes involved are still poorly understood, especially compared with insect humoral immunity.

Results

We explored the transcriptional response to parasitoid attack in Drosophila larvae at nine time points following parasitism, hybridizing five biologic replicates per time point to whole-genome microarrays for both parasitized and control larvae. We found significantly different expression profiles for 159 probe sets (representing genes), and we classified them into 16 clusters based on patterns of co-expression. A series of functional annotations were nonrandomly associated with different clusters, including several involving immunity and related functions. We also identified nonrandom associations of transcription factor binding sites for three main regulators of innate immune responses (GATA/srp-like, NF-κB/Rel-like and Stat), as well as a novel putative binding site for an unknown transcription factor. The appearance or absence of candidate genes previously associated with insect immunity in our differentially expressed gene set was surveyed.

Conclusion

Most genes that exhibited altered expression following parasitoid attack differed from those induced during antimicrobial immune responses, and had not previously been associated with defense. Applying bioinformatic techniques contributed toward a description of the encapsulation response as an integrated system, identifying putative regulators of co-expressed and functionally related genes. Genome-wide studies such as ours are a powerful first approach to investigating novel genes involved in invertebrate immunity.