Project description:Whole-genome methylomes and total transcriptomes for muscle and liver tissues of Lake Malawi cichlid species characterised in the context of phenotypic diversification.
Project description:Influenza A virus (IAV) predisposes individuals to secondary infections with the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae (the pneumococcus). Infections may manifest as pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis or otitis media (OM). It remains controversial as to whether secondary pneumococcal disease is due to the induction of an aberrant immune response or IAV induced immunosuppression. Moreover, as the majority of studies have been performed in the context of pneumococcal pneumonia, it remains unclear how far these findings can be extrapolated to other pneumococcal disease phenotypes. Here, we demonstrate that the viral hemagglutinin (HA) mediates bacterial OM by inducing a pro-inflammatory response in the middle ear cavity in a replication-dependent manner. Importantly, our findings show that it is the inflammatory response that mediates pneumococcal replication; not viral suppression of the immune system or epithelial damage. This study provide the first evidence that HA induced inflammation drives pneumococcal replication in the middle ear cavity, which has important consequences to the treatment of pneumococcal OM.
Project description:Generation of single cell and single nuclei transcriptomic data of post-mortem tissues from a Malawi cohort. We aim to explore differences in the immune response between Covid-19, Non-Covid19 LRTD (lower respiratory tract disease) and no-LTRD at the single cell level from lung, nasal and blood. Autopsies were conducted through minimally invasive autopsy using needle-biopsy. Samples were then processed with a 10X Chromium in Blantyre, Malawi. Some samples were run individually and others pooled. Pooled samples were split using single nucleotide polymorphisms or through hashtag oligonucelotides. Data processing and analysis was performed in R using the Seurat package.
Project description:Thanks to surface digestion protocol above pneumococcal pediatric strains and in silico selection, we selected 94 pneumococcal proteins according to their surface-exposed domains and/or interactions with surface environment. Then, that proteins were cloned as recombinant form in Escherichia coli and face off to pediatric sera from control and pneumococcal patients.