Moret Yannick
Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2006 Jun 7;273(1592):1399-405. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2006.3465.
Encounters with parasites and pathogens are often unpredictable in time. However, experience of an infection may provide the host with reliable cues about the future risk of infection for the host itself or for its progeny. If the parental environment predicts the quality of the progeny's environment, then parents may further enhance their net reproductive success by differentially providing their offspring with phenotypes to cope with potential hazards such as pathogen infection. Here, I test for the occurrence of such an adaptive transgenerational phenotypic plasticity in the mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor. A pathogenic environment was mimicked by injection of bacterial lipopolysaccharides for two generations of insects. I found that parental challenge enhanced offspring immunity through the inducible production of antimicrobial peptides in the haemolymph.
与寄生虫和病原体的接触在时间上往往不可预测。然而，感染经历可能会为宿主提供有关其自身或其后代未来感染风险的可靠线索。如果亲代环境能够预测子代环境的质量，那么父母可能会通过有差异地为后代提供应对病原体感染等潜在危害的表型，进一步提高其净生殖成功率。在此，我测试了黄粉虫（Tenebrio molitor）中这种适应性跨代表型可塑性的存在情况。通过向两代昆虫注射细菌脂多糖来模拟致病环境。我发现亲代受到的挑战通过在血淋巴中诱导产生抗菌肽增强了后代的免疫力。
