How the insect immune system interacts with an obligate symbiotic bacterium.

ABSTRACT: The animal immune system provides defence against microbial infection, and the evolution of certain animal-microbial symbioses is predicted to involve adaptive changes in the host immune system to accommodate the microbial partner. For example, the reduced humoral immune system in the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, including an apparently non-functional immune deficiency (IMD) signalling pathway and absence of peptidoglycan recognition proteins (PGRPs), has been suggested to be an adaptation for the symbiosis with the bacterium Buchnera aphidicola. To investigate this hypothesis, the interaction between Buchnera and non-host cells, specifically cultured Drosophila S2 cells, was investigated. Microarray analysis of the gene expression pattern in S2 cells indicated that Buchnera triggered an

SUBMITTER: Douglas AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3013419 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature