ArticleCurrent biology : CB2016
Convergent Balancing Selection on an Antimicrobial Peptide in Drosophila.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 71 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
71 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 145 citations in OpenAlex.
- A cosmopolitan inversion facilitates seasonal adaptation in overwintering Drosophila.Genetics · 2024Pooled it
- Artificial intelligence catalyzes antimicrobial peptide design.Synthetic and systems biotechnology · 2027Review
- Retracing the origin and evolution of a cryptic antimicrobial peptide within mammalian lactoferrin.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- NATURAL VARIATION IN RADIOTOLERANCE IS ASSOCIATED WITH DIFFERENCES IN INNATE IMMUNE ACTIVITY AND S-PHASE TRANSCRIPTION IN DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A century of theories of balancing selection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Drosophila host defense mechanisms against filamentous fungal pathogens with diverse lifestyles.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- Layers of immunity: Deconstructing theeLife · 2025Article
- Trade-off between antibacterial immune defense and oogenesis progression in female Drosophila melanogaster.Genetics · 2025Article
- Pathogen-induced damage in Drosophila: Uncoupling disease tolerance from resistance.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Functional characterization of Paillotin: an immune peptide regulated by the Immune deficiency (Imd) pathway with pathogen-specific roles inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
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- Varying phylogenetic signal in susceptibility to four bacterial pathogens across species of Drosophilidae.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Single Amino Acid Changes Impact the Ability ofACS omega · 2025Article
- Article
- A Trade-Off Between Antimicrobial Peptide Resistance and Sensitivity to Host Immune Effectors inEvolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Aquatic Invertebrate Antimicrobial Peptides in the Fight Against Aquaculture Pathogens.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Deterministic and stochastic effects drive the gut microbial diversity in cucurbit-feeding fruit flies (Diptera, Tephritidae).PloS one · 2025Article
- Emerging roles of antimicrobial peptides in innate immunity, neuronal function, and neurodegeneration.Trends in neurosciences · 2024Review
- A systematic framework for understanding the microbiome in human health and disease: from basic principles to clinical translation.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2024Review
11 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Genes of the immune system often evolve rapidly and adaptively, presumably driven by antagonistic interactions with pathogens [1-4]. Those genes encoding secreted antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), however, have failed to exhibit conventional signatures of strong adaptive evolution, especially in arthropods (e.g., [5, 6]) and often segregate for null alleles and gene deletions [3, 4, 7, 8]. Furthermore, quantitative genetic studies have failed to associate naturally occurring polymorphism in AMP genes with variation in resistance to infection [9-11]. Both the lack of signatures of positive selection in AMPs and lack of association between genotype and immune phenotypes have yielded an interpretation that AMP genes evolve under relaxed evolutionary constraint, with enough functional redundancy that variation in, or even loss of, any particular peptide would have little effect on overall resistance [12, 13]. In stark contrast to the current paradigm, we identified a naturally occurring amino acid polymorphism in the AMP Diptericin that is highly predictive of resistance to bacterial infection in Drosophila melanogaster [13]. The identical amino acid polymorphism arose in parallel in the sister species D. simulans, by independent mutation with equivalent phenotypic effect. Convergent substitutions at the same amino acid residue have evolved at least five times across the Drosophila genus. We hypothesize that the alternative alleles are maintained by balancing selection through context-dependent or fluctuating selection. This pattern of evolution appears to be common in AMPs but is invisible to conventional screens for adaptive evolution that are predicated on elevated rates of amino acid divergence.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.