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Sex-specific Rroutes to immune senescence In Drosophila melanogaster

Kubiak, Marco and Tinsley, Matthew C. 2017. Sex-specific Rroutes to immune senescence In Drosophila melanogaster. Scientific Reports 7 (1) , 10417. 10.1038/s41598-017-11021-6

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Abstract

Animal immune systems change dramatically during the ageing process, often accompanied by major increases in pathogen susceptibility. However, the extent to which senescent elevations in infection mortality are causally driven by deteriorations in canonical systemic immune processes is unclear. We studied Drosophila melanogaster and compared the relative contributions of impaired systemic immune defences and deteriorating barrier defences to increased pathogen susceptibility in aged flies. To assess senescent changes in systemic immune response efficacy we injected one and four-week old flies with the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana and studied subsequent mortality; whereas to include the role of barrier defences we infected flies by dusting the cuticle with fungal spores. We show that the processes underlying pathogen defence senescence differ between males and females. Both sexes became more susceptible to infection as they aged. However, we conclude that for males, this was principally due to deterioration in barrier defences, whereas for females systemic immune defence senescence was mainly responsible. We discuss the potential roles of sex-specific selection on the immune system and behavioural variation between males and females in driving these different senescent trends.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Chemistry
Additional Information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
ISSN: 2045-2322
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 6 January 2021
Date of Acceptance: 17 August 2017
Last Modified: 06 May 2023 04:12
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/137353

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