Recent Advances in the Use of Drosophila melanogaster as a Model to Study Immunopathogenesis of Medically Important Filamentous Fungi

Table 1

Important research questions on antifungal immunity in Drosophila.

Which host defense mechanisms in Drosophila are important for fungal clearance before the induction of humoral immune responses? What is the contribution of cellular immunity in defense against fungi?
How Drosophila immune system discriminates opportunistic from entomopathogenic fungi?
Which fungal molecules other than b-glucans trigger activation of host immune responses in Drosophila?
Are there any fungal virulence factors that exert immunosuppressive effects on Toll signaling or other immune signaling pathways? Is there any role of pathogen or self-nucleic acid sensing in Drosophila host defense?
How Drosophila discriminates sensing of self- from non-self-immune activating molecules? Is there any evidence of the presence of endogenous ligands for Drosophila pattern recognition receptors?
Are there any immune modulating properties of the antimicrobial peptides in Drosophila?
Is there any role for antimicrobial peptide-DNA complex formation in insect immunity against fungi?
Is there any cooperative activity between different Drosophila immune receptors?