Naturally-occurring variation in virulence was studied in the opportunistic fungal pathogens, Aspergillus nidulans and Aspergillus fumigatus. I measured variation in growth on Neiland's solid agar medium and virulence in an insect model host, Galleria mellonella, in 92 A. nidulans recombinant strains generated by a cross between two wild type strains. A weak positive correlation was found betwe...

Abstract: Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) with a probe mixture of differently labeled genomic DNA from females and males highlighted the W chromosomes in mitotic plates and the W chromatin in polyploid interphase nuclei of the silkworm Bombyx mori, the flour moth Ephestia kuehniella, and the wax moth Galleria mellonella. The overproportionate fluorescence signal indicated an accumulatio...

Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) with a probe mixture of differently labeled genomic DNA from females and males highlighted the W chromosomes in mitotic plates and the W chromatin in polyploid interphase nuclei of the silkworm Bombyx mori, the flour moth Ephestia kuehniella, and the wax moth Galleria mellonella. The overproportionate fluorescence signal indicated an accumulation of repet...

UNLABELLED ABSTRACT Virulence has been proposed to be an emergent property, which by definition implies that it is not reducible to its components, but this application of a philosophical concept to the host-microbe interaction has not been experimentally tested. The goals of our study were to analyze the correlation of the phenotype with the ability to cause disease and to determine the dynami...

The antibacterial activity of immune haemolymph Galleria mellonella directed against Escherichia coli D31 was destroyed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa crude proteolytic fraction. This was demonstrated by diffusion well assay and acid gel electrophoresis and subsequent bioautography. On the contrary, lysozyme activity appeared to be insensitive to extracellular proteases of P. aeruginosa when activit...

To determine the possibility of plasmid transfer occurring between strains of Bacillus thuringiensis in infected lepidopterous larvae, Galleria mellonella and Spodoptera littoralis were infected with two or more strains of B. thuringiensis and the resulting bacteria from the dead insects were examined for plasmid transfer. Transfer rates of plasmids coding for crystal production and tetracyclin...

Larvae of the insect Galleria mellonella are increasingly being used for studying pathogenic microbes and their virulence mechanisms, and as a rapid model for screening novel antimicrobial agents. The larvae (waxworms) are most frequently infected by injection of pathogenic organisms into the haemocoel through the insect's prolegs. The mostly widely used method for restraining the waxworms for ...

The infectivity, incubation time, and reproduction of three heterorhabditid nematodes, Heterorhabditis sp. Bacardis and FL2122 strains and H. bacteriophora Poinar HP88 strain were studied in two insect hosts, an apionid weevil, Cylas formicarius (F.), and a pyralid moth, Galleria mellonella (L.). Two of the nematodes, Heterorhabditis sp. Bacardis and FL2122 strains, were of tropical or subtropi...

Evaluation of Cryptococcus neoformans virulence in a number of nonmammalian hosts suggests that C. neoformans is a nonspecific pathogen. We used the killing of Galleria mellonella (the greater wax moth) caterpillar by C. neoformans to develop an invertebrate host model system that can be used to study cryptococcal virulence, host immune responses to infection, and the effects of antifungal comp...