Understanding of bacterial virulence using the silkworm infection model.

We have used silkworms, larva of Bombyx mori, to investigate host-pathogen interactions. Silkworms have several advantages, such as high availability of a large number of animals and ease of injection of quantitative amounts of samples. Human pathogenic bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, or Pseudomonas aeruginosa kill silkworms. In this review, I would like to summarize our approach identifying S. aureus virulence factors by using the silkworm infection model.