Drosophila immune priming to Enterococcus faecalis relies on immune tolerance rather than resistance.

Innate immune priming increases an organism's survival of a second infection after an initial, non-lethal infection. We used Drosophila melanogaster and an insect-derived strain of Enterococcus faecalis to study transcriptional control of priming. In contrast to other pathogens, the enhanced survival in primed animals does not correlate with decreased E.

Shadow enhancers mediate trade-offs between transcriptional noise and fidelity.

Enhancers are stretches of regulatory DNA that bind transcription factors (TFs) and regulate the expression of a target gene. Shadow enhancers are two or more enhancers that regulate the same target gene in space and time and are associated with most animal developmental genes. These multi-enhancer systems can drive more consistent transcription than single enhancer systems.

Longitudinal monitoring of individual infection progression in .

The innate immune system is critical for infection survival. is a key model for understanding the evolution and dynamics of innate immunity. Current toolsets for fly infection studies are limited in throughput and, because of their destructive nature, cannot generate longitudinal measurements in individual animals.

Two promoters integrate multiple enhancer inputs to drive wild-type knirps expression in the Drosophila melanogaster embryo.

Proper development depends on precise spatiotemporal gene expression patterns. Most developmental genes are regulated by multiple enhancers and often by multiple core promoters that generate similar transcripts. We hypothesize that multiple promoters may be required either because enhancers prefer a specific promoter or because multiple promoters serve as a redundancy mechanism.