Drosophila melanogaster as a model to understand the mechanisms of infection mediated neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative diseases
Nibedita Nayak, Monalisa Mishra
Abstract
The innate immune system primarily gets triggered by microbe infiltration, injury, stress, aging, and brain disorders. The hyperactivation of the innate immune system and neuroinflammatory reactions contributes to chronic age-related neurodegeneration. The mechanism for activation of the immune pathway is conserved between Drosophila melanogaster (D. melanogaster) and human being. Thus, D. melanogaster can serve as a model organism to decipher the cellular and molecular mechanism between infection and neurodegenerative diseases. In D. melanogaster, prolonged protective, excessive neuroinflammatory responses in the brain lead to neurodegeneration through antimicrobial peptides mediated neurotoxicity. The prolonged inflammation in the microglial cells helps in the progression of neurodegenerative disease. Therefore, the connection between inflammatory mechanisms in the brain and neurodegeneration pathogenesis in D. melanogaster is systematically reviewed.