Nematodes as a tool to study insect immunity
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Invertebrates and especially insects belong to the ecologically most successful organisms living on Earth. An adaptation to the antigen pressure of the environment (mainly to micro-organisms) depends on insect innate immunity. Invertebrates compensated the absence of complicated immune reactions by specific adaptations and functions of cellular and humoral parts of their immune system. Although an adaptive immunity in the form we know in vertebrates does not exist in invertebrates, there are advanced mechanisms modulating their immune response. Presented studies on fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, wax moth Galleria mellonella and honey bee Apis mellifera describe cellular and humoral components of their immune system and methods for their measurement. In many experiments we used natural infection model combining two pathogens – bacteria Photorhabdus luminescens and nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora with their insect host. New mechanisms of insect immune response to nematobacterial pathogens were identified. Not surprisingly, among the genes significantly affected by the nematobacterial infection, mostly those related to immunity, cellular and developmental processes were found to be crucial, e.g. genes coding for members of coagulation cascade and recognition molecules. This study was supported by grant GAČR 17 - 03253S. |
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