ArticlePloS one2016
Royal Decree: Gene Expression in Trans-Generationally Immune Primed Bumblebee Workers Mimics a Primary Immune Response.
Article in PloS one, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
What it found
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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.
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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.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Host-associated beneficial gut microbiota boosts induced immunity and limits immune deployment costs in bumblebees.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Immune priming of honey bees protects against a major microsporidian pathogen.Pest management science · 2025Article
- Toward Understanding and Halting Legacies of Trauma.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- Evidence for trans-generational immune priming againstFrontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Multigenerational inheritance of parasitic stress memory inEnvironmental epigenetics · 2025Article
- Immune challenges and pathogen risks in edible insects: safeguarding health in space life-support systems.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Review
- Urbanization Shifts Immunometabolism in a Common Bumblebee.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- A simulated natural heatwave perturbs bumblebee immunity and resistance to infection.The Journal of animal ecology · 2024Article
- Legacies of salient environmental experiences-insights from chemosensation.Chemical senses · 2024Article
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- Trans-generational immune priming against American Foulbrood does not affect the performance of honeybee colonies.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Article
- Host-pathogen coevolution drives innate immune response to Aphanomyces astaci infection in freshwater crayfish: transcriptomic evidence.BMC genomics · 2022Article
- Efficient Oral Priming ofVaccines · 2022Article
- Consuming sunflower pollen reduced pathogen infection but did not alter measures of immunity in bumblebees.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Sociality and disease: behavioral perspectives in ecological and evolutionary immunology.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2022Article
- Lack of evidence for trans-generational immune priming against the honey bee pathogen Melissococcus plutonius.PloS one · 2022Article
- Small RNAs and chromatin in the multigenerational epigenetic landscape ofPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- A parental transcriptional response to microsporidia infection induces inherited immunity in offspring.Science advances · 2021Article
- Individuality in the Immune Repertoire and Induced Response of the SpongeFrontiers in immunology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Invertebrates lack the cellular and physiological machinery of the adaptive immune system, but show specificity in their immune response and immune priming. Functionally, immune priming is comparable to immune memory in vertebrates. Individuals that have survived exposure to a given parasite are better protected against subsequent exposures. Protection may be cross-reactive, but demonstrations of persistent and specific protection in invertebrates are increasing. This immune priming can cross generations ("trans-generational" immune priming), preparing offspring for the prevailing parasite environment. While these phenomena gain increasing support, the mechanistic foundations underlying such immune priming, both within and across generations, remain largely unknown. Using a transcriptomic approach, we show that exposing bumblebee queens with an injection of heat-killed bacteria, known to induce trans-generational immune priming, alters daughter (worker) gene expression. Daughters, even when unexposed themselves, constitutively express a core set of the genes induced upon direct bacterial exposure, including high expression of antimicrobial peptides, a beta-glucan receptor protein implicated in bacterial recognition and the induction of the toll signaling pathway, and slit-3 which is important in honeybee immunity. Maternal exposure results in a distinct upregulation of their daughters' immune system, with a signature overlapping with the induced individual response to a direct exposure. This will mediate mother-offspring protection, but also associated costs related to reconfiguration of constitutive immune expression. Moreover, identification of conserved immune pathways in memory-like responses has important implications for our understanding of the innate immune system, including the innate components in vertebrates, which share many of these pathways.
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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.