Septic Signals

Getting an injury is bad enough, but if the wound becomes infected and turns septic then the consequences can be serious or even fatal. If that happens, the immune system needs to kick into action to fight the infection and promote healing. This image shows fruit fly guts that have been genetically engineered to ‘light up’ with a green fluorescent protein when a certain molecular pathway involved in immunity (called JAK/STAT) is switched on. The top gut is healthy and undamaged, while the middle one has sustained a clean injury and the bottom one has an infected wound. It turns out that specialised blood cells in the flies, known as haemocytes, are responsible for activating these JAK/STAT signals when they sense damage and infection in the area. As well as stimulating an anti-infection response, the signals also activate stem cells to create new gut cells and patch up the damage.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image from work by Sveta Chakrabarti and colleagues
• Global Health Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Genetics, May 2016