The horseshoe crab: a model for gram-negative sepsis in marine organisms and humans

The roles of the amebocyte in providing hemostasis and controlling infection, and its reaction to endotoxin, suggest that the response of platelets and the blood coagulation system in various mammals to gram-negative infection or endotoxin is an evolutionary remnant of this ancient mechanism. In humans, this mechanism occasionally subverts its presumed protective function by overresponding in a manner that results in pathophysiologic thrombosis or hemorrhage. (In this regard, it is interesting that human platelets are much more resistant to the effects of bacterial endotoxins than are other species.) Similarly, the rudimentary ability of mammalian platelets to phagocytose particles and kill bacteria may be another remnant of functions that are more important in amebocytes (or the thrombocytes of other invertebrates). Thus, these two cells, one from an ancient invertebrate and the other from mammals, have remarkably similar characteristics, although the relative importance of their various functions has changed as evolution has taken place. Nevertheless, after at least 400,000,000 years of evolution, coagulation and anti-bacterial mechanisms remain at least partially linked.