Omics · study · 2026
Impact of allyl-isothiocyanate and high sucrose diet on antimicrobial peptide expression and survival in Drosophila melanogaster
Listed in NCBI GEO
The global rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria highlights the urgent need for alternative strategies to support host defense against infections.
Description
Bioactive plant-derived compounds, such as isothiocyanates, have gained attention due to their antimicrobial and immunomodulatory properties. Allyl-isothiocyanate (AITC), a hydrolysis product of glucosinolates found in Brassica vegetables, has demonstrated antimicrobial activity in vitro and the ability to modulate antimicrobial peptide (AMP) expression in cell culture models.
However, it’s in vivo effects under metabolically challenging dietary conditions remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the impact of dietary AITC supplementation on immune responses and survival in Drosophila melanogaster exposed to a high-sucrose diet (HSD), a dietary condition known to impair metabolic health and immune function. Flies were fed an HSD with or without 0.25 mM AITC and subsequently subjected to oral infection with either Leuconostoc pseudomesenteroides or Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum, which preferentially activate the Toll and Imd signaling pathways, respectively.
Read the rest (3 more)
AMP expression was analyzed by qPCR and RNA sequencing, and physiological consequences were assessed by lifespan analysis. AITC did not affect food intake or basal AMP expression under non-infected conditions. HSD significantly reduced lifespan in both sexes, and AITC supplementation did not rescue this effect.
Following infection, both HSD and AITC influenced survival in a sex- and pathogen-specific manner, with AITC frequently exacerbating mortality rather than improving outcomes. While selected AMPs, particularly Attacin D, were modulated in a context-dependent manner, RNA sequencing revealed no consistent transcriptional changes in core Toll or Imd pathway components. Overall, our findings indicate that dietary AITC does not enhance host defense under high-sugar conditions and that its effects on immunity and survival are strongly sex-specific.
These results underscore the complexity of diet–immune interactions and caution against extrapolating in vitro antimicrobial effects to in vivo host protection.
Links
Get the data
- GEO FTP directory ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/series/GSE318nnn/GSE318172 ↗
download · from NCBI GEO
Where it is published
- GEO accession page ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE318172 ↗
landing page · from NCBI GEO
Documentation and papers
- PRJNA1416838 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA1416838 ↗
project · from NCBI GEO
- PubMed 42039210 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42039210 ↗
publication · from NCBI GEO
Topics
- Stated by source
- Drosophila melanogaster · Expression profiling by high throughput sequencing
- From keywords
- Life Sciences
- Inferred from text
- RNA sequencing 75% · Sequencing 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 9 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| NCBI GEO | GSE318172 | 11 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| access_level | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:life-sciences | mapping · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[method].geo_series_type:expression-profiling-by-high-throughput-sequencing | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /gdstype |
| concepts[modality].local:modality:rna-seq | enrichment · NCBI GEO | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (75%) |
| concepts[modality].local:modality:sequencing | enrichment · NCBI GEO | keyword-concept-rules@1.0.0 | title+description (75%) |
| concepts[organism].NCBITaxon:7227 | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /taxon |
| description | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /summary |
| publication_date | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · NCBI GEO | connector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0 | /title |