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Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence
Galleria mellonella larvae have been widely used as alternative non-mammalian models for the study of fungal virulence and pathogenesis. The larvae can be acquired in small volumes from worm farms, pet stores, or other independent suppliers commonly found in the United States and parts of Europe. Ho...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7558789/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32784766 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jof6030130 |
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author | Firacative, Carolina Khan, Aziza Duan, Shuyao Ferreira-Paim, Kennio Leemon, Diana Meyer, Wieland |
author_facet | Firacative, Carolina Khan, Aziza Duan, Shuyao Ferreira-Paim, Kennio Leemon, Diana Meyer, Wieland |
author_sort | Firacative, Carolina |
collection | PubMed |
description | Galleria mellonella larvae have been widely used as alternative non-mammalian models for the study of fungal virulence and pathogenesis. The larvae can be acquired in small volumes from worm farms, pet stores, or other independent suppliers commonly found in the United States and parts of Europe. However, in countries with no or limited commercial availability, the process of shipping these larvae can cause them stress, resulting in decreased or altered immunity. Furthermore, the conditions used to rear these larvae including diet, humidity, temperature, and maintenance procedures vary among the suppliers. Variation in these factors can affect the response of G. mellonella larvae to infection, thereby decreasing the reproducibility of fungal virulence experiments. There is a critical need for standardized procedures and incubation conditions for rearing G. mellonella to produce quality, unstressed larvae with the least genetic variability. In order to standardize these procedures, cost-effective protocols for the propagation and maintenance of G. mellonella larvae using an artificial diet, which has been successfully used in our own laboratory, requiring minimal equipment and expertise, are herein described. Examples for the application of this model in fungal pathogenicity and gene knockout studies as feasible alternatives for traditionally used animal models are also provided. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7558789 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75587892020-10-26 Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence Firacative, Carolina Khan, Aziza Duan, Shuyao Ferreira-Paim, Kennio Leemon, Diana Meyer, Wieland J Fungi (Basel) Review Galleria mellonella larvae have been widely used as alternative non-mammalian models for the study of fungal virulence and pathogenesis. The larvae can be acquired in small volumes from worm farms, pet stores, or other independent suppliers commonly found in the United States and parts of Europe. However, in countries with no or limited commercial availability, the process of shipping these larvae can cause them stress, resulting in decreased or altered immunity. Furthermore, the conditions used to rear these larvae including diet, humidity, temperature, and maintenance procedures vary among the suppliers. Variation in these factors can affect the response of G. mellonella larvae to infection, thereby decreasing the reproducibility of fungal virulence experiments. There is a critical need for standardized procedures and incubation conditions for rearing G. mellonella to produce quality, unstressed larvae with the least genetic variability. In order to standardize these procedures, cost-effective protocols for the propagation and maintenance of G. mellonella larvae using an artificial diet, which has been successfully used in our own laboratory, requiring minimal equipment and expertise, are herein described. Examples for the application of this model in fungal pathogenicity and gene knockout studies as feasible alternatives for traditionally used animal models are also provided. MDPI 2020-08-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7558789/ /pubmed/32784766 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jof6030130 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Review Firacative, Carolina Khan, Aziza Duan, Shuyao Ferreira-Paim, Kennio Leemon, Diana Meyer, Wieland Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence |
title | Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence |
title_full | Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence |
title_fullStr | Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence |
title_full_unstemmed | Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence |
title_short | Rearing and Maintenance of Galleria mellonella and Its Application to Study Fungal Virulence |
title_sort | rearing and maintenance of galleria mellonella and its application to study fungal virulence |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7558789/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32784766 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jof6030130 |
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