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Advances in Comparative Immunology pp 161–172Cite as

Annelida: Recognition of Nonself in Earthworms

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Abstract

Earthworms belonging to oligochaete annelids became an important model for comparative immunologists in the early 1960s with the publication of transplantation experimental results reporting that autologous transplants of earthworm body wall pieces were accepted, but xenograft or even allografts were not. These transplantation experiments proved the existence of self or nonself recognition in earthworms, paving the way for extensive studies on the earthworm immune mechanisms that evolved to prevent the invasion of pathogens. In 1989 Charles Janeway, Jr., published a general concept based on the existence of pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) on the immune cells that recognize and bind conserved molecular structures of microorganisms known as pathogen-associated molecular patterns and thus trigger the immune response to potential pathogens. In the present review, the structure, specificity, and expression profile of PRRs characterized in earthworms are discussed and their role in innate defense suggested.

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Acknowledgement

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 671881. Special thanks to Miss Agáta Procházková for her help drawing a picture of an earthworm.

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  1. Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Martin Bilej, Petra Procházková, Radka Roubalová, František Škanta & Jiří Dvořák

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  1. Martin Bilej
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  2. Petra Procházková
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  4. František Škanta
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Correspondence to Martin Bilej .

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  1. Laboratory of Comparative Immunology, Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Edwin L. Cooper

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Bilej, M., Procházková, P., Roubalová, R., Škanta, F., Dvořák, J. (2018). Annelida: Recognition of Nonself in Earthworms. In: Cooper, E. (eds) Advances in Comparative Immunology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76768-0_7

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