Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học Journal of Biology đề tài: Immune function keeps endosymbionts under control. | Journal of Biology BioMed Central Minireview Immune function keeps endosymbionts under control Stuart Reynolds and Jens Rolff Addresses Department of Biology and Biochemistry University of Bath Bath BA2 7AY UK. tDepartment of Animal and Plant Sciences University of Sheffield Western Bank Sheffield S10 2TN UK. Correspondence Stuart Reynolds. Email Published 16 October 2008 Journal of Biology 2008 7 28 doi jbiol88 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http content 7 8 28 2008 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract How does an animal host prevent intracellular symbionts getting out of hand A new paper in BMC Biology provides evidence that the mutualism between a beetle and its bacterial endosymbiont could be mediated through the expression of host immune genes. Endosymbionts insects and the evolution of mutualism Mutualistic interactions between symbiotic microbes and animals are common in nature. Most such relationships are based on nutrient cycling 1 although there can be other benefits for example symbionts can protect hosts from parasites or pathogens 2 . Such symbionts are particularly common in insects perhaps because most insects are specialist herbivores and plants are frequently poor-quality food for animals the essential amino acids and biosynthetic cofactors that the animals lack can be provided by mutualistic microbes. In many cases the relationship has become so close that the microbial partner usually a bacterium lives within cells in the host s body it is then said to be an endosymbiont is vertically transmitted from one host generation to another and is never found in the free-living condition. The evolution of such mutualistic relationships is however a challenge to evolutionary theory for example 3 . For mutualism to evolve in the first place both partners must share the interest of a net gain in fitness from their association and once symbiosis is established both .
