Cereal weevils' antimicrobial peptides: at the crosstalk between development, endosymbiosis and immune response

Abstract

Interactions between animals and microbes are ubiquitous in nature and strongly impact animal physiology. These interactions are shaped by the host immune system, which responds to infections and contributes to tailor the associations with beneficial microorganisms. In many insects, beneficial symbiotic associations not only include gut commensals, but also intracellular bacteria, or endosymbionts. Endosymbionts are housed within specialized host cells, the bacteriocytes, and are transmitted vertically across host generations. Host–endosymbiont co-evolution shapes the endosymbiont genome and host immune system, which not only fights against microbial intruders, but also ensures the preservation of endosymbionts and the control of their load and location. The cereal weevil Sitophilus spp. is a remarkable model in which to study the evolutionary adaptation of the immune system to endosymbiosis owing to its binary association with a unique, relatively recently acquired nutritional endosymbiont, Sodalis pierantonius . This Gram-negative bacterium has not experienced the genome size shrinkage observed in long-term endosymbioses and has retained immunogenicity. We focus here on the sixteen antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) identified in the Sitophilus oryzae genome and their expression patterns in different tissues, along host development or upon immune challenges, to address their potential functions in the defensive response and endosymbiosis homeostasis along the insect life cycle. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Sculpting the microbiome: how host factors determine and respond to microbial colonization’.