A single amino acid polymorphism in natural Metchnikowin alleles of Drosophila results in systemic immunity and life history tradeoffs.

ABSTRACT: Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are at the interface of interactions between hosts and microbes and are therefore expected to be rapidly evolving in a coevolutionary arms race with pathogens. In contrast, previous work demonstrated that insect AMPs tend to evolve more slowly than the genome average. Metchikowin (Mtk) is a Drosophila AMP that has a single amino acid residue that segregates as either proline (P) or arginine (R) in populations of four different species, some of which diverged more than 10 million years ago. These results suggest that there is a distinct functional importance to each allele. The most likely hypotheses are driven by two main questions: does each allele have a different efficacy against different specific pathogens (specificity hypothesis)? Or, is one allele a mor

SUBMITTER: Perlmutter JI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10957085 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature