The innate immune systems of malacostracan crustaceans exhibit both conserved and evolutionarily distinct components

Abstract

Growing demands for aquatic sources of animal proteins have attracted significant investments in aquaculture research in recent years. The crustacean aquaculture industry has undergone substantial growth to accommodate a rising global demand, however such large-scale production is susceptible to pathogen-mediated destruction. It is clear that a thorough understanding of the crustacean innate immune system is imperative for future research into combating current and future pathogens of the main food crop species. Through a comparative genomics approach utilising extant data from 55 species, we describe the innate immune system of crustaceans from the Malacostraca class. We identify 7407 malacostracan genes from 39 gene families implicated in different aspects of host defence and demonstrate dynamic evolution of innate immunity components within this group. Malacostracans have achieved flexibility in recognising infectious agents through divergent evolution and expansion of pathogen recognition receptors genes. Antiviral RNAi, Toll and JAK-STAT signal transduction pathways have remained conserved within Malacostraca, although the Imd pathway appears to lack several key components. Immune effectors such as the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have unique evolutionary profiles, with many malacostracan AMPs not found in other arthropod groups. Lastly, we describe four putative novel immune gene families, characterised by distinct protein domains, potentially representing important evolutionary novelties of the malacostracan immune system.