Saturday, May 21, 2022
SCIENMAG: Latest Science and Health News
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME PAGE
  • BIOLOGY
  • CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
  • MEDICINE
    • Cancer
    • Infectious Emerging Diseases
  • SPACE
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME PAGE
  • BIOLOGY
  • CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
  • MEDICINE
    • Cancer
    • Infectious Emerging Diseases
  • SPACE
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Scienmag - Latest science news from science magazine
No Result
View All Result
Home Immunology

Family ties: Immune response size controlled by cell ‘inheritance’

November 21, 2016
in Immunology
0
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
IMAGE
Credit: Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Australia

Australian and Irish researchers have gained previously unachievable insights into how the size of our immune response is controlled, by developing new imaging and computational biology approaches to follow the behaviour of hundreds of cells. The research team discovered that in response to an infection, immune T cells develop in ‘families’ that are programmed to divide and die at different times after the infection is detected. This new understanding of how the immune response is controlled may underpin future improvements in vaccination or the treatment of autoimmune diseases.

During an immune response to an infection, immune T cells that recognise the invading microbe increase in number through cell division, and become armed to fight the infection. These ‘armies’ of T cells will stop expanding at a later point, and are cleared by the death of most of the cells, leaving only a few ‘sentinels’ called memory cells that provide long lasting immunity.

Dr Julia Marchingo, Professor Phil Hodgkin and colleagues at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute worked with Professor Ken Duffy and Mr Giulio Prevedello from Maynooth University, Ireland, to develop a new way to track immune T cells as they divide and increase in number during an immune response. Their research was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

The new imaging and computational biology techniques revealed that ‘families’ of immune cells develop during an immune response, said Dr Marchingo, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Dundee, UK.

“Like families of people, these families of T cells vary in their characteristics,” she said. “In the case of T cell families, the variability we detected was in how many times the cells would divide, and at what point in the immune response the cells would die. We were surprised by how consistent these were within each family of cells — as if the related cells had inherited a set of instructions specifying how they should behave,” Dr Marchingo said.

Professor Duffy said the team’s discovery of how immune cells respond to infection was driven by an entirely new approach to analysing the immune response. “In the past we had to track immune cells using microscopy, watching individual cells over days to see whether they were dividing or dying,” he said. “This was incredibly time consuming and limited our ability to understand the intricacies of the immune response. By combining laboratory techniques with mathematical analyses we could follow hundreds of T cell families, and realised that their behaviour was influenced by which family they belonged to.”

Professor Hodgkin said the research team’s discovery was an important advance in understanding how immune responses are controlled. “As well as providing new insights into how we protect ourselves from infection, this research could explain some of the problems that contribute to autoimmune disorders, when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body, as well as underpinning advances in vaccination technology,” he said.

###

The research was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, Science Foundation Ireland, the European Union Seventh Framework Programme, and Australian Postgraduate Award, the Edith Moffat Scholarship, Cancer Council Victoria and the Victorian Government Operational Infrastructure Scheme.

The project was initiated when Dr Marchingo was a PhD student at the institute enrolled through The University of Melbourne’s Department of Medical Biology.

Media Contact

Vanessa S Solomon
61-475-751-811
[email protected]

Deirdre Watters
Director of Marketing & Communications
Maynooth University, Ireland
T: 353-1-708-3363
M: 353-86-803-5274
[email protected]

Share25Tweet16Share4ShareSendShare
  • A look into the past

    What the new Jurassic Park movie gets wrong: Aerodynamic analysis causes a rethink of the biggest pterosaur.

    67 shares
    Share 27 Tweet 17
  • Resolution time of COVID vaccine-related lymphadenopathy

    66 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 17
  • Do early therapies help very young children with or at high likelihood for autism?

    71 shares
    Share 28 Tweet 18
  • Researchers discover genetic cause of megaesophagus in dogs

    1026 shares
    Share 410 Tweet 257
  • NBA sees rise in acts of symbolic violence

    65 shares
    Share 26 Tweet 16
  • Null results research now published by major behavioral medicine journal

    312 shares
    Share 125 Tweet 78
ADVERTISEMENT

About us

We bring you the latest science news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Latest NEWS

Understanding how sunscreens damage coral

SUTD develops design-based activity to enhance students’ understanding in electrochemistry

New Curtin research resurrects ‘lost’ coral species

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 187 other subscribers

© 2022 Scienmag- Science Magazine: Latest Science News.

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME PAGE
  • BIOLOGY
  • CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
  • MEDICINE
    • Cancer
    • Infectious Emerging Diseases
  • SPACE
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • CONTACT US

© 2022 Scienmag- Science Magazine: Latest Science News.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Posting....