<i>Drosophila in vivo</i> screening for phagocyte factors protective against <i>L</i>. <i>amazonensis</i> infection.

Gene knockdown was targeted to hemocytes by crossing a fly line carrying the Hml(Δ)-Gal4-driver to UAS-RNAi-expressing flies. Croquemort and draper mutant lines were also analyzed, as indicated. The 3rd column presents the percentage of assays where the survival of the experimentally-infected flies was significantly reduced compared to PBS-injected RNAi flies and to control amastigote-infected flies (p<0.005), the total number of independent survival assays are presented in parentheses. Fly lines that were susceptible in more than 60% of the assays were considered hits (bold). The hyper-susceptibility of fly lines deficient in Rac2, ftz-f1 and ß’COP, demonstrates that the approach identifies known phagocytic factors. The comparison of the curves was performed using a Log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test. Representative survival curves of susceptible flies are presented in Fig 3.