Increased Survival in the Red Flour Beetle after Oral Priming with Bacteria-Conditioned Media

Strain-specific priming of resistance in the red flour beetle,

Specificity of oral immune priming in the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum.

Immune specificity is the degree to which a host's immune system discriminates among various pathogens or antigenic variants. Vertebrate immune memory is highly specific due to antibody responses. On the other hand, some invertebrates show immune priming, i.e. improved survival after secondary exposure to a previously encountered pathogen. Until now, specificity of priming has only been demonst...

Strain-specific priming of resistance in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum.

As invertebrates lack the molecular machinery employed by the vertebrate adaptive immune system, it was thought that they consequently lack the ability to produce lasting and specific immunity. However, in recent years, it has been demonstrated that the immune defence of invertebrates is by far more complicated and specific than previously envisioned. Lasting immunity following an initial expos...

Doublesex target genes in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum

Sex determination cascade in insects terminates with the production of sex-specific protein, Doublesex (Dsx). We identified the dsx homolog (Tcdsx) in Tribolium castaneum. The pre-mRNA of Tcdsx is sex-specifically spliced into three female (Tcdsxf1, Tcdsxf2 and Tcdsxf3) and one male-specific (Tcdsxm) isoforms. Cis-regulatory elements potentially involved in sex-specific splicing of the Tcdsx pr...

Larval RNA Interference in the Red Flour Beetle, Tribolium castaneum

The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, offers a repertoire of experimental tools for genetic and developmental studies, including a fully annotated genome sequence, transposon-based transgenesis, and effective RNA interference (RNAi). Among these advantages, RNAi-based gene knockdown techniques are at the core of Tribolium research. T. castaneum show a robust systemic RNAi response, making ...