School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK.
Appl Environ Microbiol. 2012 Apr;78(7):2075-81. doi: 10.1128/AEM.07486-11. Epub 2012 Jan 27.
The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been a powerful experimental organism for almost half a century. Over the past 10 years, researchers have begun to exploit the power of C. elegans to investigate the biology of a number of human pathogens. This work has uncovered mechanisms of host immunity and pathogen virulence that are analogous to those involved during pathogenesis in humans or other animal hosts, as well as novel immunity mechanisms which appear to be unique to the worm. More recently, these investigations have uncovered details of the natural pathogens of C. elegans, including the description of a novel intracellular microsporidian parasite as well as new nodaviruses, the first identification of viral infections of this nematode. In this review, we consider the application of C. elegans to human infectious disease research, as well as consider the nematode response to these natural pathogens.
秀丽隐杆线虫作为一种实验生物已经有近半个世纪的历史了。在过去的 10 年中，研究人员已经开始利用秀丽隐杆线虫来研究许多人类病原体的生物学特性。这项工作揭示了宿主免疫和病原体毒力的机制，这些机制与人类或其他动物宿主发病过程中涉及的机制类似，也揭示了一些似乎是线虫所特有的新型免疫机制。最近，这些研究揭示了秀丽隐杆线虫的天然病原体的一些细节，包括一种新型的细胞内微孢子虫寄生虫以及新的诺达病毒的描述，这是首次鉴定出这种线虫的病毒感染。在这篇综述中，我们考虑了将秀丽隐杆线虫应用于人类传染病研究，以及考虑了线虫对这些天然病原体的反应。
