Figure 3. Antimicrobial Gene Expression Differences between eiger Mutants and Wild-Type Controls.

Flies were injected with an LB control, B. cepacia, S. typhimurium, L. monocytogenes, or S. aureus or left uninjected. RNA was harvested after a 6-h incubation at 29 °C, and quantitative RT-PCR was used to assay drosomycin (A) and diptericin (B) gene expression levels relative to a ribosomal protein 15a control. White bars indicate the w¹¹¹⁸ parental control; grey bars, w¹¹¹⁸; egr¹/egr³ One asterisk indicates p < 0.01; two asterisks, p < 0.001 using Tukey's multiple-comparison test following one-way ANOVA. Unmarked parental/mutant pairs do not differ in a statistically significant manner. No differences were seen with drosmycin expression between mutant and parental lines, whereas eiger mutant flies transcribed 2- to 3-fold more diptericin (during a 150- to 1,100-fold induction compared with uninjected flies) than did their parents, when challenged with LB, B. cepacia, or S. typhimurium.