Finally, the relevance of neutropenia in the higher susceptibility of Peds1-deficient larvae to ST was further confirmed by the ability of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (csf3a), which induces neutrophil production, to robustly increase the resistance of wild type larvae and partially rescue the resistance (Fig. 5G) and neutrophil number of Peds1-deficient larvae (Fig. 5H), when csf3a was forced to express by mRNA microinjection (see Methods). The gene discussed is PEDS1; the disease is Decreased total neutrophil count.