TY - JOUR AU - Wu, Kaiyu AU - Conly, John AU - Surette, Michael AU - Sibley, Christopher AU - Elsayed, Sameer AU - Zhang, Kunyan PY - 2012 DA - 2012/11/23 TI - Assessment of virulence diversity of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains with a Drosophila melanogaster infection model JO - BMC Microbiology SP - 274 VL - 12 IS - 1 AB - Staphylococcus aureus strains with distinct genetic backgrounds have shown different virulence in animal models as well as associations with different clinical outcomes, such as causing infection in the hospital or the community. With S. aureus strains carrying diverse genetic backgrounds that have been demonstrated by gene typing and genomic sequences, it is difficult to compare these strains using mammalian models. Invertebrate host models provide a useful alternative approach for studying bacterial pathogenesis in mammals since they have conserved innate immune systems of biological defense. Here, we employed Drosophila melanogaster as a host model for studying the virulence of S. aureus strains. SN - 1471-2180 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2180-12-274 DO - 10.1186/1471-2180-12-274 ID - Wu2012 ER -