Award details

Defining foetus-microbiota interactions

Reference	BBS/E/F/00044409
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Lindsay Jennifer Hall
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Quadram Institute Bioscience
Department	Quadram Institute Bioscience Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	793,511
Status	Current
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/06/2014
End date	31/03/2018
Duration	45 months

Abstract

During pregnancy, the maternal environment including the maternal microbiota may have a significant impact on foetal development as well as early and later life health outcomes. However it is currently unclear how microbiota members and/or their products are transmitted to the foetus from the gut to facilitate this very early life development. This project tackles this issue by identifying the microbial and host factors required for this process. We will test the hypothesis that specific microbiota members (including Bifidobacterium) can translocate to the developing foetus via specific microbial factors and interact with specific immune cells to facilitate this gut-in utero transfer. Real time, longitudinal imaging in vivo and microscopy will be used to track bacteria and determine what bacterial molecules are critical for the process. We will focus on Bifidobacterium (using bioluminescence or fluorescence labelled bacteria), and using a similar labelling approach we will tract host cells (e.g. Natural Killer cells) to explore this process, confirming importance of these cells with transgenic models. Host and immune profiling will be via flow cytometry and RNASeq as described below. For comprehensive characterisation and profiling of the microbiota we will employ a variety of Next Generation Sequencing methods (DNA and RNA, including 16s, shotgun sequencing and RNASeq for microbiome profiles at different stages of pregnancy [mother and foetus] and also transcriptional responses [bacterium and host responses].

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Immunology, Microbiology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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