Is the epidermal club cell part of the innate immune system in fathead minnows
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Fishes in the superorder Ostariophysi, including fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas), possess specialized epidermal club cells that contain an alarm substance. Damage to these cells, as would occur during a predator attack, causes the release of the alarm substance and can indicate the presence of actively foraging predators to nearby conspecifics. For nearly 70 years, research involving epidermal club cells has focused on the alarm substance and the role it plays in predator/prey interactions. However, recent studies have indicated that there may be a connection between epidermal club cells and the fish immune system. Fish increase investment in epidermal club cells upon exposure to skin penetrating pathogens and parasites. In this study I tested for differences in epidermal club cell investment by fathead minnows exposed to the immunosuppressive effects of the glucocorticoid hormone cortisol. In experiment 1, fathead minnows were exposed to either a single intraperitoneal injection of corn oil or no injection at all. The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether corn oil, the vehicle for cortisol injections in later experiments, had an effect on epidermal club cell density. The treatments had no effect on epidermal club cell size, cell area, or epidermal thickness. In experiment 2, skin extract was prepared from the skin of corn oil injected and non injected fathead minnows as in experiment 1 to determine whether corn oil had an effect on the epidermal club cell alarm substance concentration. The treatments showed no significant differences in observed anti-predator behaviour, including change in shelter use, dashing and freezing. In experiment 3, fathead minnows were exposed to either a single intraperitoneal injection of cortisol or corn oil. The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether cortisol, a known immunosuppressant, had an effect on epidermal club cell investment. Fathead minnows exposed to a single cortisol injection had significantly reduced respiratory burst activity of kidney phagocytes indicating that there was suppression of the innate immune system. Furthermore, cortisol treated fathead minnows showed significantly lower numbers of epidermal club cells. The treatments had no effect on individual epidermal club cell area, epidermal thickness and serum cortisol levels after 12 days. The results from this experiment suggest that pharmacological cortisol injections in fathead minnows have a suppressive effect on the fish innate immune system. Furthermore, the findings that cortisol induced immunosuppression also influences epidermal club cell investment provides support for the hypothesis that epidermal club cells may function as part of the fish immune system.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".