Arboviruses are an emerging threat to public health. Arbovirus transmission to vertebrates hinges on dissemination from the arthropod gastrointestinal tract, and ultimately infection of the arthropod salivary glands. Therefore, salivary gland immunity impacts arbovirus transmission; however, these immune responses are poorly understood. Here, we describe the utility of Drosophila melanogaster as a salivary gland infection model. First, we describe the use of a salivary gland-specific driver to launch RNA interference or virus replicon transgenes. Next, we infect flies with an arbovirus panel and find multiple viruses that infect Drosophila salivary glands, albeit inefficiently. We find that this infection is not controlled by antiviral RNA silencing; thus, we silence a panel of immune genes in the salivary glands, but do not observe changes in infection. These data suggest that Drosophila may be used to study salivary gland infection, and that there are likely unexplored pathways controlling infection of this tissue.

中文翻译：

---

果蝇果蝇为成年唾液腺虫媒病毒感染的模型。

虫媒病毒是对公共卫生的新兴威胁。虫媒病毒向脊椎动物的传播取决于节肢动物胃肠道的传播以及最终感染节肢动物唾液腺。因此，唾液腺的免疫力影响虫媒病毒的传播。但是，对这些免疫反应的了解很少。在这里，我们描述了果蝇果蝇作为唾液腺感染模型的实用程序。首先，我们描述了唾液腺特异性驱动程序的使用，以启动RNA干扰或病毒复制子转基因。接下来，我们用虫媒病毒小组感染苍蝇，发现感染果蝇唾液腺的多种病毒，尽管效率低下。我们发现这种感染不受抗病毒RNA沉默的控制。因此，我们沉默了唾液腺中的一组免疫基因，但不要观察到感染的变化。这些数据表明果蝇可用于研究唾液腺感染，并且可能存在控制该组织感染的未探索途径。