| The study of insect immunology is a rapidly growing area of research. Recent discoveries have significantly improved our understanding of the evolutionarily conserved mechanisms and strategies various organisms use to protect themselves from infectious microorganisms and parasites. Discoveries of immune response in insects have also helped to enhance our understanding of mammalian immune response, and vice versa. Insects also have significant impacts on human health and ecology, so a greater understanding of insects will ultimately lead to improvements in agriculture and medicine. Though there have been significant advances in both insect and mammalian immunology, there is still much that is left to be learned about similarities and differences between the immune responses in both taxa. This thesis has been designed to explore and partly address some of the questions that exist about immune response in both taxa. This thesis is divided into two chapters. The intent of the first chapter is to compare the innate immune defenses of insects and mammals by looking at some of the more well-described features of insect immune response, and comparing these to similar features in mammalian innate immune response. The second chapter is an exploration of the role of nitric oxide production in mammalian and insect cell lines using the Greiss reaction. While insect cell lines failed to produce significant differences in NO production, it was also noted that both cell lines did not display significant changes in viability, even at doses that would wipe out murine macrophage cells. RAW 264.7 cells did not produce NO after exposure to VSV, but did exhibit dose-dependent lethality. The insect response to LPS helps to characterize both insect cell lines and the results obtained from the macrophage cells provide indirect evidence for the qualitatively different response of RAW cells to VSV and LPS. |
