PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Atsushi Miyashita
TI  - A fast immune priming that confers a complete infection resistance on silkworm (<em>Bombyx mori</em>)
AID  - 10.1101/205369
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 205369
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/24/205369.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/10/24/205369.full
AB  - I have previously reported an immune priming in silkworm triggered by peptidoglycans, which is long-lasting but slow-acting. Here I report a faster immune priming, which can be triggered by an injection of gelatin or collagen, that confers a complete infection resistance to Gram-negative bacteria on silkworms. Gelatin-injected silkworms showed 100% viability in a lethal dose of a Gram-negative bacterial infection within two hours after the gelatin injection. Injection of collagen showed a similar effect. Whereas, an injection of non-gelatin protein (bovine serum albumin) solution did not induce such reaction. These results suggest that the silkworm possesses a fast and gelatin-inducible pathway that confers infection resistance to Gram-negative bacteria, which may act as a front-line defense. This finding highlights the potency of gelatin as a tool for investigating the primed immune responses in insect species.