Project description:Bats have adapted to pathogens through diverse mechanisms, including increased resistance - rapid pathogen elimination, and tolerance - limiting tissue damage following infection. In the Egyptian fruit bat (an important model in comparative immunology) several mechanisms conferring disease tolerance were discovered, but mechanisms underpinning resistance remain poorly understood. Previous studies on other species suggested that elevated basal expression of innate immune genes may lead to increased resistance to infection. Here, we test whether such transcriptional patterns occur in Egyptian fruit bat tissues through single-cell and spatial transcriptomics of gut, lung and blood cells, comparing gene expression between bat, mouse and human. Despite numerous recent loss and expansion events of interferons in the bat genome, interferon expression and induction are remarkably similar to that of mouse. In contrast, central complement system genes are highly and uniquely expressed in key regions in bat lung and gut epithelium, unlike in human and mouse. These genes also evolve rapidly in their coding sequence across the bat lineage. Finally, the bat complement system displays strong hemolytic and inhibitory activities. Together, these results indicate a distinctive transcriptional divergence of the complement system, which may be linked to bat resistance, and highlight the intricate evolutionary landscape of bat immunity.
Project description:The goal of our study was to experimentally quantify both at the transcriptomic and proteomic level the effects of comprehensive innate immune stimulations in chicken. To this end, SILAC-labeled chicken DF-1 cells were mock-treated or treated with either ChIFN1 (1000 IU/mL for 6h), transfected poly (I:C) (4,25 ug/mL for 6 h) or infected with Infectious Bursal Disease Virus strain PBG-98 (IBDV, MOI 5 for 8h). Total cellular RNA was extracted using RNeasy Mini Kit (QIAGEN) and Illumina libraries were prepared and sequenced. In parallel, proteins were extracted and processed for SILAC-based quantitative mass-spectrometry. Samples were run on a LTQ-Velos Orbitrap tandem mass spectrometer and the data processing and quantification were performed by the MaxQuant software.
Project description:We profiled the transcriptome of sorted BAT and SAT Tregs and the transcriptional effects of BAT activating factors on whole-BAT transcriptomes when Tregs are present or absent.