Antimicrobial defences in Drosophila: the story so far

Drosophila has recently emerged as an important model for the study of innate immunity. Two signalling pathways triggered by different classes of microorganisms control its antimicrobial defence. This phenomenon has been recently shown to reflect specificity in pathogen recognition and in subsequent induction of the systemic immune response. In the following we will review recent developments in the field, which give a more defined picture of how the Drosophila innate immune system works both in terms of microbe perception and effector molecules, as well as point to the missing pieces of the puzzle.