Abstract:
Immune memory provides enhanced and often highly specific protection that is ‘learned’ from previous exposures. However, also innate immune systems show forms of memory, in the form of ‘trained immunity’ in vertebrates or ‘immune priming’ in invertebrates. Currently, we still know little about the evolution of basic characteristics of these forms of ‘innate immune memory’ and its consequences. In my talk, I will first place the discovery of innate immune memory into a historical perspective, to then focus on our main model organism, the Red Flour Beetle Tribolium castaneum. Using experimental evolution approaches, we tested whether the specificity of immune priming against bacteria can evolve rapidly, and under which conditions the hosts’ ability to be primed is maintained. We then take the environment into account to test whether evolution of resistance is influenced by the hosts’ niche construction ability through the beetles’ secretion of antimicrobial substances into its flour environment. Finally, I will shift perspective to the pathogen and ask whether host priming affects virulence evolution of the entomopathogen Bacillus thuringiensis.
Biographical note:
Joachim Kurtz an expert on immune system across animals and on the quite fascinating field of eco-immunology. In a landmark paper published in Nature in 2003 (Kurtz J, Franz K (2003) Innate defence: evidence for memory in invertebrate immunity. Nature 425:37–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/425037a), Joachim demonstrated the existence of immunological memory in an invertebrate - contradicting the long-held claim that immunological memory was associated with so-called adaptive immunity only.
Please join us for what will certainly be an excellent and thought-provoking talk.
Zoom link for those who will be available only remotely:
https://u-bordeaux-fr.zoom.us/j/83778633984?pwd=WE51S1E1WmpjNHo1anJKblc5NWpRdz09