Sexual Dimorphisms in Innate Immunity and Responses to Infection in .

The sexes show profound differences in responses to infection and the development of autoimmunity. Dimorphisms in immune responses are ubiquitous across taxa, from arthropods to vertebrates. shows strong sex dimorphisms in immune system responses at baseline, upon pathogenic challenge, and over aging.

Persistence of an extracellular systemic infection across metamorphosis in a holometabolous insect.

Organisms with complex life cycles can differ markedly in their biology across developmental life stages. Consequently, distinct life stages can represent drastically different environments for parasites. This difference is especially striking with holometabolous insects, which have dramatically different larval and adult life stages, bridged by a complete metamorphosis.

The Toll pathway underlies host sexual dimorphism in resistance to both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria in mated Drosophila.

Background: Host sexual dimorphism is being increasingly recognized to generate strong differences in the outcome of infectious disease, but the mechanisms underlying immunological differences between males and females remain poorly characterized. Here, we used Drosophila melanogaster to assess and dissect sexual dimorphism in the innate response to systemic bacterial infection.

Results: We demonstrated sexual dimorphism in susceptibility to infection by a broad spectrum of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.