Work in Progress(WIP)
Tuesdays,9:00am-10:00am, Room C2303 MCN
A note from your local DGS.
Dr. Jay Jerome and Dr. Chris Aiken are the DGSs for the two graduate programs within the Division of Molecular Pathogenesis.
Dr. Jerome and Dr. Aiken will occasionally use the myMP to connect with the students and provide useful information and updates.
For today,
News from Cellular and Molecular Pathology Program:Dikshya Bastakoty successfully defended her dissertation last week. Congratulations, Dr. Bastakoty!
Dr. Aiken (shown below, munching on a snack during his spring break mountain adventure), has the following:
To M&I Students and Committee Chairs: We're now in the 21st century! The M&I Program has "gone live" with using Redcap for submitting SACS forms and Chair's letters for Qualifying Exams, Committee Meetings, and Defenses. No more paper forms to deal with! We thank Lindsay Meyers and Lorie Franklin for facilitating this transition.
You need do nothing until you receive a link from the student prior to a scheduled QE, Committee Meeting, or Defense.
Reminder to M&I Students:
Now that you have submitted your reading lists, it's now time to work on studying those papers and preparing your annotated list, which is due on June 1, 2015. Remember, reading papers is an ongoing activity for a researcher, so keep building your reference list, because before you know it you will be writing your dissertation!
Division Announcements
April 8 - Vanderbilt Symposium on Infection and Immunology- 8:00am-6:00pm, Student Life Center, Vanderbilt
April 26 - MP Division faculty meeting- 3:00pm, room A5305 MCN - Tom Aune, M.D.-Chalk Talk
- A total of 29 publications featuring commentaries, reviews and primary research have posted on NCBI from faculty in our division since last month's myMP. Collaborative work by Drs. Newcomb and Peebles is featured below. If you would like to contribute an article highlight, from your lab or the lab of a colleague within MP, please feel free to email us.
9.H7N9 influenza virus neutralizing antibodies that possess few somatic mutations. Thornburg NJ, Zhang H, Bangaru S, Sapparapu G, Kose N, Lampley RM, Bombardi RG, Yu Y, Graham S, Branchizio A, Yoder SM, Rock MT, Creech CB, Edwards KM, Lee D, Li S, Wilson IA, García-Sastre A, Albrecht RA, Crowe JE Jr J Clin Invest. 2016 Apr 1;126(4):1482-94. doi: 10.1172/JCI85317. Epub 2016 Mar 7.
"STAT6 signaling attenuates IL-17-producing γδ T cells during acute Klebsiella pneumoniae infection."
Bloodworth M.H. et al., Infection & Immunity, 2016 March 7; Epub ahead of print
Patients with asthma have innate immune defects with pathogens, which may partially explain why these individuals are at increased risk for invasive bacterial infections and bacterial pneumonia.
γδ T cells reside at the interface of epithelial-environmental interfaces such as the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, and are a critical first line of defense against bacterial and fungal pathogens. A subset of γδ T cells are the γδ17 cells which produce large quantities of IL-17, a cytokine crucial to the anti-bacterial and anti-fungal function of these cells.
STAT6, an important transcription factor for Th2 cytokine signaling, is expressed at high levels in the T cells of people with asthma.
The study by Bloodworth et al., shows that STAT6 signaling negatively regulates γδ17 cells. Endogenous STAT6 signaling reduces γδ17 cell numbers during acute Klebsiella pneumoniae infection.
The authors demonstrate that γδ17 cells express the type I IL-4R, the receptor for the Th2 cytokine IL-4. IL-4 increases STAT6 phosphorylation in γδ T cells, and inhibits γδ17 cell production of IL-17A. IL-4 decreases Sgk1 expression, which may lead to destabilized γδ17 expression of IL-23R. IL-23 is an inflammatory cytokine that is important for the induction of γδ17 cells. See also graphical abstract below
In summary, STAT6 inhibition of γδ17 cells provides a possible explanation for why asthmatic patients are at greater risk for invasive bacterial disease.
