Li Weiwei
Laboratory of Invertebrate Immunological Defense, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China.
Dev Comp Immunol. 2021 Dec;125:104231. doi: 10.1016/j.dci.2021.104231. Epub 2021 Aug 11.
A popular view in the current academic circle is that invertebrates have no adaptive immunity. However, the immune memory and specificity of invertebrates pose a serious challenge to this view and constitute immune priming based on innate immunity. The Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule (Dscam) gene of invertebrates, with approximately 10,000 alternatively spliced isoforms, has a unique characteristic: it specifically binds to different types of bacteria and promotes cell phagocytosis; owing to its antibody-like function, Dscam is a key candidate protein for immune priming. However, the high molecular diversity of Dscam and the gaps and inconsistencies in the existing research make the study of regulation of immune priming by Dscam challenging. In recent years, significant research has been conducted on the Dscam-regulated immune functions in insects and crustaceans, providing preliminary results for Dscam-regulated innate immunity and immune priming, but some important questions remain unresolved. In this review, we summarize the existing knowledge about Dscam-regulated immunity and discuss three yet unanswered questions, the study of which may improve the understanding of the role of Dscam-regulated immune priming in invertebrates.
当前学术界的一种普遍观点是，无脊椎动物没有适应性免疫。然而，无脊椎动物的免疫记忆和特异性对这一观点构成了严峻挑战，并构成了基于先天免疫的免疫启动。无脊椎动物的唐氏综合征细胞粘附分子（Dscam）基因具有约10000种可变剪接异构体，具有独特的特性：它能特异性结合不同类型的细菌并促进细胞吞噬作用；由于其类似抗体的功能，Dscam是免疫启动的关键候选蛋白。然而，Dscam的高分子多样性以及现有研究中的差距和不一致性使得研究Dscam对免疫启动的调节具有挑战性。近年来，对昆虫和甲壳类动物中Dscam调节的免疫功能进行了大量研究，为Dscam调节的先天免疫和免疫启动提供了初步结果，但一些重要问题仍未解决。在这篇综述中，我们总结了关于Dscam调节免疫的现有知识，并讨论了三个尚未得到解答的问题，对这些问题的研究可能会增进我们对Dscam调节的免疫启动在无脊椎动物中的作用的理解。
