Three Xenorhabdus nematophilus subspecies influenced Steinernema glaseri growth profiles and growth rates, but this was not necessarily because of different bacterial growth rates. Virulence of dauer nematodes in larval Galleria mellonella varied with the number of dauers retaining bacteria and the bacterial subspecies. Virulence was least for dauers grown on X. nematophilus subsp. bovienii bec...

OBJECTIVES Colistin resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii has been associated with loss of virulence and a negative impact on isolate selection. In this study, exposure of clinical isolates to suboptimal concentrations of colistin was used to explore the capacity to develop resistance by diverse mechanisms, and whether acquired resistance always reduces fitness and virulence. METHODS Twelve c...

Injection, contact, and soil assays were used to compare infectivity of Heterorhabditis bacteriophora strain HP88 and Steinernema carpocapsae strain All to final instar Galleria mellonella larvae. Under comparable assay conditions, H. bacteriophora produced less Galleria mortality and showed greater within-assay variability in infectivity than S. carpocapsae. Injection of individual S. carpocap...

The larvae of the greater wax moth, Galleria mellonella, are pests of active beehives. In infection biology, these larvae are playing a more and more attractive role as an invertebrate host model. Here, we report on the first genome sequence of Galleria mellonella.

Citation: Sousa PS, Silva IN, Moreira LM, Veríssimo A and Costa J (2018) Differences in Virulence Between Legionella pneumophila Isolates From Human and Non-human Sources Determined in Galleria mellonella Infection Model. Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol. 8:97. doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2018.00097 Differences in Virulence Between Legionella pneumophila Isolates From Human and Non-human Sources Determine...

The implementation of infection models that approximate human disease is essential for understanding pathogenesis at the molecular level and for testing new therapies before they are entered into clinical stages. Insects are increasingly being used as surrogate hosts because they share, with mammals, essential aspects of the innate immune response to infections. We examined whether the larva of...

Infective juveniles (J3) of the entomogenous nematodes Steinernema feltiae DD-136 (ca. 10,000 J3/100 ml) and S. glaseri (ca. 2,500 J3/100 ml) were incubated in steam-sterilized and nonsterilized sandy soil and bark compost for 8 weeks at 25 C. The nematodes were recovered by a two-step extraction procedure at 1-week intervals, and their infectivity to lepidopterous larvae (Spodoptera litura and...

We followed changes in the level of phospho-MAP kinases in the greater wax moth Galleria mellonella after infection with Bacillus thuringiensis. We observed an enhanced level of phosphorylated p38 and JNK in fat bodies of the infected larvae. In hemocytes, injection of B. thuringiensis caused the highest increase in phospho-JNK, however, all pathways were activated after aseptic injection. We r...