Immunological recognition of cuticular transplants in insects.
Transplantation of allogeneic and xenogeneic cuticle onto the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, was carried out in order to compare the specificity of immune recognition of these 'skin grafts' with that of implanted tissues. In order to facilitate interpretation of results, the technique of transplanting cuticle from nymphal donors onto nymphal recipients was adopted - if donor subcuticular epidermis is not recognised as 'foreign', it will grow, fuse with the recipient's epidermal sheet and will be stimulated by the recipient's hormonal signals to produce new cuticle of donor type at the next moult. Neither allogeneic cuticle nor xenogeneic cuticle from Blatta orientalis were recognised as foreign by the immune system of P. americana - dark patches of Blatta-type cuticle were produced at the graft site post-moult. Conversely, xenogeneic cuticle of Blaberus craniifer was not visible post-moult. These results corroborate those from implantation studies, that allogeneic tissues from P. americana and xenogeneic tissues from B. orientalis are immunologically compatible with P. americana, whereas xenogeneic tissue from Blaberus craniifer is incompatible. Whether this incompatibility is immunological or 'positional' has not yet been determined; the observation that xenografts from Nauphoeta cinerea do not reappear on P. americana post-moult, whereas 50% of N. cinerea implants are not recognised as 'foreign', suggests that 'positional incompatibility' (i.e. the signals responsible for formation of cuticular pattern are incorrect for the donor epidermis) may also play an important part in the rejection of N. cinerea cuticular grafts.
D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D006084:Graft Rejection; D007313:Insecta / Q000276:immunology*; D008297:Male; D009758:Nymph / Q000276:immunology; D010526:Periplaneta / Q000276:immunology; D016038:Skin Transplantation; D013045:Species Specificity; D014183:Transplantation, Heterologous; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous