Specificity of oral immune priming in the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum

Immune specificity is the degree to which a host's immune system discriminates among various pathogens or antigenic variants. Vertebrate immune memory is highly specific due to antibody responses. On the other hand, some invertebrates show immune priming, i.e. improved survival after secondary...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology letters (2005) 2017-12, Vol.13 (12), p.20170632-20170632
Main Authors: Futo, Momir, Sell, Marie P., Kutzer, Megan A. M., Kurtz, Joachim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Antigenic variants
Antigens
Bacillus thuringiensis - physiology
Bacteria
Evolutionary Biology
Exposure
Flour
Host-Pathogen Interactions
Immune system
Immunological memory
Innate Immunity
Invertebrate Immune Priming
Invertebrates
Larva - growth & development
Larva - immunology
Larva - microbiology
Pathogens
Priming
Specific Immune Memory
Spores
Strains (organisms)
Toxicity
Tribolium - growth & development
Tribolium - immunology
Tribolium - microbiology
Tribolium castaneum
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Summary:Immune specificity is the degree to which a host's immune system discriminates among various pathogens or antigenic variants. Vertebrate immune memory is highly specific due to antibody responses. On the other hand, some invertebrates show immune priming, i.e. improved survival after secondary exposure to a previously encountered pathogen. Until now, specificity of priming has only been demonstrated via the septic infection route or when live pathogens were used for priming. Therefore, we tested for specificity in the oral priming route in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. For priming, we used pathogen-free supernatants derived from three different strains of the entomopathogen, Bacillus thuringiensis, which express different Cry toxin variants known for their toxicity against this beetle. Subsequent exposure to the infective spores showed that oral priming was specific for two naturally occurring strains, while a third engineered strain did not induce any priming effect. Our data demonstrate that oral immune priming with a non-infectious bacterial agent can be specific, but the priming effect is not universal across all bacterial strains.
ISSN:1744-9561
1744-957X
DOI:10.1098/rsbl.2017.0632