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New Insight into Immunity of Bats Could Aid in Human Disease Research
Thu, 04/26/2018 - 3:32pm
A closer examination of the bat’s natural immunity to the Marburg
virus and other diseases could yield new treatment options for humans.
A team of scientists has identified several immune-related genes in
Egyptian fruit bats that could suggest that bats deal with viral
infections in a substantially different way than primates.
The researchers found that bats, which are known to harbor several
viruses that cause disease in humans without exhibiting symptoms—are
able to host viruses that are pathogenic in humans by tolerating, rather
than overcoming, the infection.
During the study, the team sequenced, assembled and analyzed the
genome of Rousettus aegyptiacus—the Egyptian fruit bat—a natural
reservoir of the Marburg virus and the only known reservoir for any
filovirus. “Using that DNA, we generated the most contiguous bat genome to date
and used it to understand the evolution of immune genes and gene
families in bats,” co-senior author Gustavo Palacios, PhD, who heads the
Center for Genome Sciences at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), said in a statement. “This is
classical comparative immunology and a good example of the link between
basic and applied sciences.”
The researchers discovered an expanded and diversified family of
natural killer (NK) cell receptors, MHC class I genes and type I
interferons, which dramatically differ from their functional
counterparts in other mammals, including mice and non-human primates.
A theoretical function evaluation of these genes suggests that a
higher threshold of activation of some component of the immune system
may exist in bats.
Natural killer cells are immune cells that play a role in fighting
viral infections. To be tolerant against healthy tissue and
simultaneously attack infected cells, the activity of NK cells is
tightly regulated by an array of activating and inhibiting receptors.
“Further evaluation of these expanded sets of genes suggests that
other key components of the immune system like the MHC- and the IFN-loci
in bats may have evolved toward a state of immune tolerance,” Mariano
Sanchez-Lockhart, PhD, of USAMRIID, said in a statement.
The researchers initially looked at advancing the characterization
of the bat animal model. They also sought to generate antibodies that
recognize bat-specific proteins and other reagents to characterize the
bat animal model of infection, which would allow them to further
characterize the bat unique immune system.
The team now plans to compare antiviral responses between bats and
non-human primates, which could be used to understand correlates of
protection in bats and develop therapeutics against Marburg virus and
other lethal filovirus infections.
The study was published in https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674%2818%2930402-1" rel="nofollow - Cell .
Source: https://www.rdmag.com/article/2018/04/new-insight-immunity-bats-could-aid-human-disease-research" rel="nofollow - https://www.rdmag.com/article/2018/04/new-insight-immunity-bats-could-aid-human-disease-research
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