deep-sea angler fish have it hard to find in the dark areas of the oceans a sexual partner. Some species solve this Problem by using the tiny male connect permanently with the much larger females, after they have found a female. The connection goes so far that the two sexes share at the end of even a blood vessel system and the males are entirely dependent on the females. Often several males hanging even on a female. Such a close connection is otherwise known only from Siamese twins who genetically are the same. This is not the case of the male and female deep-sea angler fishes of the case. They have different genomes. Therefore, it would have to come at such an intimate connection is actually a rejection reaction – similar to an organ transplant.
Why the rejection and what changes in the immune system of the fish, were necessary in order for such a connection comes from the permanently employed researchers for well over a hundred years. 1920 was for the first time a permanently connected Pair is found. It had rods in the network of the Icelandic fishing available. The solution of the angler fish, which has now been revealed by a German team of researchers, is a solid Surprise. Thomas Boehm from the Max-Planck-Institute for Immunobiology and epigenetics in Freiburg and Theodore Pietsch of the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues show in the latest issue of “Science” that the angler fish completely dispense with the acquired immune system. You pay for your reproductive success in the vast Expanses of the deep sea, therefore, with a radical caesura in the immune system.
Instead of a two-piece System consisting of innate and acquired immune system, as do all other vertebrate animals, they rely only on their innate immune system. Deep-sea angler fish, the make a permanent connection of the sexes, and thus tailor-made antibodies. You waive specific Killer T-cells infected cells are eliminated, and foreign tissue attacked, and have no wide range of MHC-molecules and more, the Alarm beat, if you have discovered something Strange.
“we have such a loss of immunological equipment would immediately lead to a fatal immune deficiency,” says Boehm of the results. What remains is the deep sea angler fish after this radical break, it is your innate System – a guard from nonspecific phagocytic and immune cells, which are not reground during each attack suitable molecular refined, as in the case of the acquired immune defense of the case.
