Award details

Avian B Cell Development: Evolution of Function (ABCDEF)

Reference	BBS/E/I/00001429
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr John Young
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	The Pirbright Institute
Department	The Pirbright Institute Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	80,490
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/07/2009
End date	31/03/2010
Duration	9 months

Abstract

This project will provide: 1) detailed knowledge of post-bursal B cell development needed for vaccine innovation, and for assays evaluating vaccination methods. New methods for study of plasma cell differentiation in culture provide the opportunity to develop new assays of B cell function. Key factors in the functional potential of B cells are switches of Ig class and to secretion of Ig. Assays for these will be developed for the quantitative description of B cell differentiation, needed for vaccine development. 2) Costimulation is the main determinant of effective antigen presentation. Understanding costimulation in chickens is essential to the study and manipulation antigen presenting cells required for improved vaccine development. By defining and making reagents to study chicken costimulatory molecules, we found that gene and protein structure, and idiosyncrasies of expression, indicate differences in the biology of these molecules in chickens. We have embarked on determining the crystal structure of chicken LICOS, as we can make large quantities of pure protein, and the mammalian molecules have not been crystallised. 3) A series of experiments (EU Salarray), aiming to expose, define and offer solutions to the drawbacks of whole-tissue microarray analyses of host-pathogen interaction, was truncated by the redundancy of a skilled staff member and transfer of such investigations away from the group. This left high quality datasets that are worthy of further, innovative analysis of a kind much needed in a field awash with un-interpretable data. Constraint by lack of sufficient genome annotation has been remedied for those genes of interest in the study, which is now ready for the innovative analysis, disentanglement of macrophage responses from the whole-spleen data.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Animal Health, Immunology, Structural Biology
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

I accept the terms and conditions of use (opens in new window)

export PDF file

back to list new search