鱼类粘膜免疫研究进展

Review of fish mucosal immunity research

Fish immunology has achieved great progress in recent years. While before 1990s, most researches focused on the fish systematic immunity, and the mucosal immunity of fish had not been given enough attention. Indeed, it has been shown that fish mucosal immunity plays an important role in disease defense. Fish mucosal immunity research has made some exciting progress in this decade. This review will focus on such progress: Constitution of mucosal-associated tissues and distribution of different immune cells, including T/B lymphocytes, granules, monocytes, macrophages, goblet cells, etc, in these sites have been well described with the development of some monoclonal antibody to these cells and associated techniques. Non-specific immune response mechanism of mucosal tissues reported these years, such as secretion of non-specific anti-bacteria and anti-fungi substances in mucus, the respiratory burst, enzyme activity of immune cells and so on, is believed important for fish disease defense. The specific immunity of mucosal tissues also attracts much interest and makes great achievement in antigen presenting, MHC genes, antibody producing and antibody secreting cells, comparison of serum and mucus immunoglobulin, relationships of immune response between different mucosal immune tissues. Whether mucosal immune system is independent of systematic immune system is another interesting question and causes great concern. In recent years, some evidences from phyletic evolution and ontogenesis show that mucosal immunity is prior to systematic immunity in evolution. Dynamics of antibody producing of mucosal tissues and serum in immersion or oral vaccines immunized fish also shows immune response can be elicited in mucosal tissues independent of systematic immune system. Some researchers also begin to pay attention to factors involved in mucosal immune regulations, for instance, neuromodulators and cytokines. The level of these factors changes in fish immune response process but the mechanisms of regulation still remain unknown. Prospect of the promising future of fish mucosal immunity has also been discussed in this review.