Abstract: Drosophila melanogaster is an attractive model insect for dissecting the innate immunity system of invertebrates and vertebrates. The fruitful results on several aspects of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), such as cloning and characterization of AMP genes, the signal transduction path way and the evolution of the AMPs multi-gene families in Drosophila species, have contributed a lot to the deep understanding of the innate immunity mechanism of insects and other organisms. Such results may also shed further light on the mechanism of immunity of some agricultural lepidopteran pest insects and the strategies of pest control. In this review, we summarized the structures, biological properties, the induction pattern, the signal transduction pathway, as well as the evolution of AMPs and their multi-gene families.

Key words: Drosophila, antimicrobial peptides, multi-gene family, immunity