Friday, December 25, 2020

Insects Pass Antiviral Immunity to Offspring

Amazing stuff! Something to learn from insects!

"Transgenerational immune priming (TGIP) allows memory-like immune responses to be transmitted from parents to offspring in many invertebrates. ...
Here, we show that Drosophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti transmit antiviral immunological memory to their progeny that lasts throughout generations. We observe that TGIP, which is virus and sequence specific but RNAi independent, is initiated by a single exposure to disparate RNA viruses and also by inoculation of a fragment of viral double-stranded RNA. The progeny, which inherit a viral DNA that is only a fragment of the viral RNA used to infect the parents, display enriched expression of genes related to chromatin and DNA binding. ..."

Insects Pass Antiviral Immunity to Offspring | The Scientist Magazine® In both Drosophila and mosquitoes, protection lasts for generations following a single maternal exposure to positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses.

Here is the respective research article:

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