Publications by authors named "A C Darby"
Bacterial infections can substantially impact host metabolic health as a result of the direct and indirect demands of sustaining an immune response and of nutrient piracy by the pathogen itself. Drosophila melanogaster and other insects that survive a sublethal bacterial infection often carry substantial pathogen burdens for the remainder of life. In this study, we asked whether these chronic infections exact metabolic costs for the host, and how these costs scale with the severity of chronic infection.
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- Endosymbiosis occurs when a microbe lives within a host, playing a key role in the evolution of complex life forms but its transition processes are not well understood.
- The study examines the genus Arsenophonus, revealing that strains shifting from horizontal to vertical transmission have larger genomes due to the acquisition of new genetic features and the loss of defense systems against viral attacks.
- The research suggests that endosymbiosis leads to a mix of genome expansion and eventual reduction as the microbe adapts to its host, enabling rapid genetic innovation before settling into a more stable state.
The Drosophila adult midgut progenitor cells (AMPs) give rise to all cells in the adult midgut epithelium, including the intestinal stem cells (ISCs). While they share many characteristics with the ISCs, it remains unclear how they are generated in the early embryo. Here, we show that they arise from a population of endoderm cells, which exhibit multiple similarities with Drosophila neuroblasts.
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- High-sugar diets in adult Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) increase their susceptibility to infections by specific Gram-negative bacteria, leading to a higher likelihood of death.
- The study shows that these bacteria grow more quickly in flies consuming high sugar, particularly linked to hyperglycemia, which may provide additional carbon for bacterial growth.
- Although flies on both diets activate immune response genes, those on high-sugar diets produce less of the necessary antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), suggesting that sugar overnutrition negatively affects the flies' immune function and alters infection dynamics.
Background: SARS-CoV-2 remains rapidly evolving, and many biologically important genomic substitutions/indels have characterised novel SARS-CoV-2 lineages, which have emerged during successive global waves of the pandemic. Worldwide genomic sequencing has been able to monitor these waves, track transmission clusters, and examine viral evolution in real time to help inform healthcare policy. One school of thought is that an apparent greater than average divergence in an emerging lineage from contemporary variants may require persistent infection, for example in an immunocompromised host.
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