Elucudation of humoral immune signaling pathways in non-Drosophila insect species

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25450486
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Insect science
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: Miura Ken 名古屋大学, 生命農学研究科, 准教授 (60219582)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): MINAKUCHI Chieka 名古屋大学, 大学院生命農学研究科, 助教 (90509134)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 昆虫 / 免疫

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The investigation on insect immune systems is indeed required from the view point of comparative immunology as well as more practical applications like the use of entomopathogenic microbes for pest control, while the comprehensive information on insect immunity, especially regarding humoral immune signaling pathway activation upon microbial infection was available only in the model organism, Drosophila. Thus, we got started this project using Tribolium beetle, which is RNA interference-friendly and the genome information of which was available, to delineate the entire picture of humoral immune pathways in this beetle species. So far, we have elucidated the nearly whole image of the pathways, which shows distinct microbial specificity and different usage of molecular species at several levels of signal transduction in comparison with the Drosophila ones, giving another reference of insect immune signaling pathways.

Free Research Field

昆虫生理生化学