Thread by @DrSalinasLab

#Immunology is wild and I think we have made it justice! Our latest work is now published and I would love everyone who loves Immunobiology to read it. This is perhaps my favorite paper of my career so far. 🧵 science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

First of all congrats to my team @RyanDHeimroth @EliCas1975 @OBenedicenti and collaborators @chris_amemiya and Pilar Muñoz. This project was true pleasure of discovery, the biology was there, waiting to be unveiled

Every paper builds upon previous work and knowledge. I called that the bible of each of my papers. In this case our Bible was a paper from 1931, by Jordan and Speidel J of Morphology. This paper is amazing and gave us many hints for our work. Mostly that lungfish have

the greatest diversity and abundance of granulocytes in any vertebrate species they had seen. They suggested they play a role during aestivation. So what's aestivation? Aestivation is a state of dormancy in which lungfish survive for long periods of time on land.

When lungfish sense unfavorable conditions they start secreting a lot of mucus to form a cocoon that covers their body and protects them from dessication. But our previous paper in 2018 taught us that likely this cocoon is so much more.

Through many experiments we found that 1) the cocoon is not just dry mucus, it is a living cellular structure that forms by serial shedding of epidermal layers. Whaaat?

2) this is possible because the Lungfish skin is full of dermal stem cells 3) granulocytes leave tissue reservoirs and flood the skin during aestivation 4) the skin becomes super inflamed, granulocytes transmigrate and form the cocoon 5) the cocoon is actively transcribing tons

Of antimicrobial immune genes 6) Granulocytes in the cocoon are actively undergoing extracellular trap formation 7) the cocoon traps bacteria during aestivation so that the Lungfish skin stays healthy during the dormant state 8) the microbiome composition of the cocoon is unique

9) if we eliminate extracellular DNA, key component of extracellular traps, Lungfish cannot stay healthy during the aestivation process, wounds and hemorrhages appear, bacterial septicemia occurs

Combined this work really highlights the astounding diversity of immune systems in this planet. Investigating non model organisms is vital to harness the power of all immune systems. Think about what I just told you?

Lungfish, every year, self inflict damage in their skin to create an outer shell that is an immunological bomb. They self inflict mucosal inflammation, something we as human dread in many disease contexts.

When water returns, lungfish regenerate their skin, they return to the water and if nothing ever happened. That is WILD! #wildimmunology

and Sam Loker for critically reviewing our manuscript and Arturo Zychlinsky for fruitful discussions during my visit to the Max Planck in 2018. Please read and give us feedback, we have a tons of new questions and projects. Thank you @NSF for funding us

@ProfJudiAllen was instrumental, reading our manuscript before submission and giving us feedback. Thank you! #WomenInSTEM