ArticleG3 (Bethesda, Md.)2014
Fighting a losing battle: vigorous immune response countered by pathogen suppression of host defenses in the chytridiomycosis-susceptible frog Atelopus zeteki.
Article in G3 (Bethesda, Md.), 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 106 citations in OpenAlex.
- Differential Immune Responses Correlate With Chytridiomycosis Severity in Italian Crested Newts.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Amphibians After Disease-Induced Declines: Genetic Insights Into Population Recoveries.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Genomic Correlates of Disease Recovery in Natural Populations of the Sierra Nevada Yellow-Legged Frog (Rana sierrae).Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Amphibian (Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis strain affects transcriptomic response in liver but not skin in latitudinal populations of the common toad (Bufo bufo).Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Evolutionary ecology of host competence after a chytrid outbreak in a naive amphibian community.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Towards the generation of gnotobiotic larvae as a tool to investigate the influence of the microbiome on the development of the amphibian immune system.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Understanding the evolution of immune genes in jawed vertebrates.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2023Review
- Immune priming prior to pathogen exposure sheds light on the relationship between host, microbiome and pathogen in disease.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- When Defenses Fail: Atelopus zeteki Skin Secretions Increase Growth of the Pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- Body condition, skin bacterial communities and disease status: insights from the first release trial of the limosa harlequin frog,Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Biodiversity is decimated by the cascading effects of the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus.PLoS pathogens · 2022Article
- A review of chemical defense in harlequin toads (Bufonidae:Toxicon: X · 2022Review
- Host species is linked to pathogen genotype for the amphibian chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis).PloS one · 2022Article
- The amphibian complement system and chytridiomycosis.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2020Review
- Presence of low virulence chytrid fungi could protect European amphibians from more deadly strains.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Immunological Aspects of Chytridiomycosis.Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Major histocompatibility complex variation is similar in little brown bats before and after white-nose syndrome outbreak.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Article
- Ancestral chytrid pathogen remains hypervirulent following its long coevolution with amphibian hosts.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The emergence of the disease chytridiomycosis caused by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has been implicated in dramatic global amphibian declines. Although many species have undergone catastrophic declines and/or extinctions, others appear to be unaffected or persist at reduced frequencies after Bd outbreaks. The reasons behind this variance in disease outcomes are poorly understood: differences in host immune responses have been proposed, yet previous studies suggest a lack of robust immune responses to Bd in susceptible species. Here, we sequenced transcriptomes from clutch-mates of a highly susceptible amphibian, Atelopus zeteki, with different infection histories. We found significant changes in expression of numerous genes involved in innate and inflammatory responses in infected frogs despite high susceptibility to chytridiomycosis. We show evidence of acquired immune responses generated against Bd, including increased expression of immunoglobulins and major histocompatibility complex genes. In addition, fungal-killing genes had significantly greater expression in frogs previously exposed to Bd compared with Bd-naïve frogs, including chitinase and serine-type proteases. However, our results appear to confirm recent in vitro evidence of immune suppression by Bd, demonstrated by decreased expression of lymphocyte genes in the spleen of infected compared with control frogs. We propose susceptibility to chytridiomycosis is not due to lack of Bd-specific immune responses but instead is caused by failure of those responses to be effective. Ineffective immune pathway activation and timing of antibody production are discussed as potential mechanisms. However, in light of our findings, suppression of key immune responses by Bd is likely an important factor in the lethality of this fungus.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.