| Background | Aubergine (Sting) is a Drosophila protein involved in germ-line development and RNA interference.Drosophila melanogaster has a robust and efficient innate immune system, which reacts to infections ranging from bacteria to fungi and, as discovered recently, viruses as well. The known Drosophila immune responses rely on humoral and cellular activities, similar to those found in the innate immune system of other animals. Recently, RNAi or 'RNA silencing' has arisen as a possible means by which Drosophila can react to specific pathogens, transposons and retroviral elements, in a fashion similar to that of a traditional mammalian adaptive immune system instead of in a more generalized and genome encoded innate immune-based response. RNAi is a highly conserved regulation and defense mechanism, which suppresses gene expression via targeted RNA degradation directed by either exogenous dsRNA (cleaved into siRNAs) or endogenous miRNAs. In plants, RNAi has been found to act as an antiviral immune response system. In Drosophila multiple core RNAi pathway genes have been reported, including piwi, vasa intronic gene (vig), aubergine (aub), armitage (armi), Rm62, r2d2 and Argonaute2 (AGO2). |