Saccharomyces cerevisiae enhances immune resistance in paper wasps

Although insects lack an acquired immune component, as occurs in vertebrates, thus relying only on an innate component of immune system, they have expanded it upon traits of plasticity and adaptation against pathogens in the form of immune priming. The recent discovery that wasps are an ecological niche of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, suggests that insects should have evolved a mechanism to tolerate and possibly benefit from the presence of this microorganism. We demonstrate that two yeast strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, previously shown to induce trained immunity in mammals, enhance resistance to bacterial infection in the paper wasp Polistes dominula, measured as bacterial clearance. Gut microbial community were studied with metataxonomy to evaluate changes caused by the experimental treatment.

尽管昆虫缺乏脊椎动物所具备的适应性免疫（acquired immune）组分，仅依赖固有免疫系统发挥功能，但它们通过免疫致敏（immune priming）的形式，拓展了固有免疫的可塑性与抗病原体适应性特征。近期研究发现，黄蜂是酿酒酵母（Saccharomyces cerevisiae）的生态位，这提示昆虫或许演化出了耐受甚至可从该微生物存在中获益的机制。本研究证实，两种此前被证实可在哺乳动物中诱导训练免疫（trained immunity）的酿酒酵母菌株，能够以细菌清除率作为评估指标，提升普通长脚胡蜂（Polistes dominula）对细菌感染的抗性。研究人员通过元分类学（metataxonomy）分析肠道微生物群落，以评估实验处理所引发的群落变化。