Ligoxygakis Petros, Pelte Nadège, Hoffmann Jules A, Reichhart Jean-Marc
Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, UPR 9022 du CNRS, 15 rue R. Descartes, F67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France.
Science. 2002 Jul 5;297(5578):114-6. doi: 10.1126/science.1072391.
Drosophila host defense to fungal and Gram-positive bacterial infection is mediated by the Spaetzle/Toll/cactus gene cassette. It has been proposed that Toll does not function as a pattern recognition receptor per se but is activated through a cleaved form of the cytokine Spaetzle. The upstream events linking infection to the cleavage of Spaetzle have long remained elusive. Here we report the identification of a central component of the fungal activation of Toll. We show that ethylmethane sulfonate-induced mutations in the persephone gene, which encodes a previously unknown serine protease, block induction of the Toll pathway by fungi and resistance to this type of infection.
果蝇对真菌和革兰氏阳性细菌感染的宿主防御由斯佩茨勒/托勒/仙人掌基因盒介导。有人提出，托勒本身并不作为模式识别受体发挥作用，而是通过细胞因子斯佩茨勒的裂解形式被激活。将感染与斯佩茨勒裂解联系起来的上游事件长期以来一直难以捉摸。在这里，我们报告了托勒真菌激活的一个核心成分的鉴定。我们表明，编码一种以前未知的丝氨酸蛋白酶的珀尔塞福涅基因中的乙磺酸乙酯诱导突变，会阻断真菌对托勒途径的诱导以及对这种感染类型的抗性。
