Project description
Insight into energy sources of immune cells in insects
Immune cells are characterised by a high proliferation and growth rate indicating that cell metabolism is central for their maintenance and function. The EU-funded IMMUNETREH project is interested in the mechanisms by which immune cells have privileged access to nutrients. Using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, researchers will test if immune cells prefer trehalose, the major sugar found in insects. Trehalose is a glucose disaccharide that is converted into glucose as an instant source of energy for the cellular needs of many species of the animal kingdom but is absent in vertebrates. Researchers will employ genetic, molecular biology and immunology techniques to address this question.
Objective
The immune response is an energy demanding process and immune cells must have a privileged access to energy/nutrients. While in mammalian system, this privileged access is achieved for example by insulin-independent glucose transporter, how is it achieved in insect is not known. The host laboratory has obtained preliminary results suggesting that the privileged access of fruit fly immune cells to nutrients might be achieved by using trehalose instead of glucose. It is known for a very long time that the primary sugar in insect is trehalose but it is a completely new idea that this carbohydrate could actually play an important role in the privileged access of immunity to resources, as in one of the most fundamental evolutionary trait. The goal of this project is therefore to test if activated Drosophila immune cells preferentially uptake trehalose and convert it to glucose intracellularly, being thus independent of the systemic carbohydrate regulation, and how important would it be for an efficient immune response. The project is based on a multidisciplinary approaches, when tissue-specific genetic tools will be used to manipulate metabolism in vivo in order to study immune response using techniques of molecular biology, developmental biology and immunology and state-of-the-art metabolic approaches. The goal for the researcher is to learn how to use Drosophila genetics and the infection models, well established in the host laboratory, and combine them with her expertise in insect physiology, cell culture and especially metabolomics.
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Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
370 05 Ceske Budejovice
Czechia