Role of neuronal and non-neuronal acetylcholine signaling in Drosophila humoral immunity

Acetylcholine (ACh) is one the major neurotransmitters in insects, whose role in mediating synaptic interactions between neurons in the central nervous system is well characterized. It also plays largely unexplored regulatory functions in non-neuronal tissues. Here we demonstrate that ACh signaling is involved in the modulation of the innate immune response of Drosophila melanogaster. Knockdown of ACh synthesis or ACh vesicular transport in neurons reduced the activation of drosomycin (drs), a gene encoding an antimicrobial peptide, in adult flies infected with a Gram-positive bacterium. drs transcription was similarly affected in Drosophila alpha 7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, nAChRalpha7 (D alpha 7) mutants, as well as in flies expressing in the nervous system a dominant negative form (D alpha 7DN) of this specific receptor subunit. Interestingly, D alpha 7DN elicited a comparable response when it was expressed in non-neuronal tissues and even when it was specifically produced in the hemocytes. Consistently, full activation of the drs gene required D alpha 7 expression in these cells. Moreover, knockdown of ACh synthesis in non-neuronal cells affected drs expression. Overall, these findings uncover neural and non-neural cholinergic signals that modulate insect immune defenses and shed light on the role of hemocytes in the regulation of the humoral immune response.