Preliminary Study Of Two TRP Ion Channel Receptors In Drosophila Melanogaster Immune Response

Innate immunity is the first line to defense host against all kinds of pathogens.In last two decades,Drosophila melanogaster has served as a particularly useful model Organism for studying and genetically dissecting the aspect of innate immunity.The immense knowledge derived from such studies has led to the important discovery of the receptors like the toll like receptors and their signalling pathways in mammalian systems.Innate immunity has been shown to be evolutionarily conserved from insect to mammals.My research work is focused on two transient receptor potential(TRP) channel receptors in Drosophila melanogaster:CG31284 and CG34123.In my thesis, mutant flies of the two TRP genes have been generated by P-element mediated imprecise excision.One gain of function mutation for CG31284 and one loss of function mutation for CG34123 were produced.We infected these mutant flies with a number of pathogens and the two alleles showed different effects to infection.The flies with increased expression of CG31284 were more resistant to infection,while those with decreased expression of CG34123 were more susceptible to infection. These results indicate that TRP receptors have a role in Drosophila immune responses.