The contribution of the chicken MHC to avian immune responses

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jim Kaufman
• Subject Area: Veterinary Medical Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 434524639

In contrast to typical mammals, the chicken major histocompatibility complex (MHC) can determine life and death for chickens in the face of various pathogens, many of them important for the poultry industry and public health. Within and next to the chicken MHC are the BG genes, which are likely to be crucial for the immune response of innate-like γδ T cells. Work package 9 (WP9) will develop and/or use various unique tools and reagents, and will build on current collaborations by making these tools and reagents freely available to the other research projects. Among these unique tools and reagents is an MHC typing system based on polymerase chain reaction followed by next generation sequencing (PCR-NGS) along with a bespoke bioinformatics pipeline, which will identify chickens relatively resistant to particular pathogens, as well as being useful for adoptive transfer experiments to elucidate immune mechanisms. Another ongoing approach is the isolation and determination of MHC-bound peptides from chicken cells infected in culture, which allows T cell epitopes to be identified. A third approach is expression of MHC molecules, which should allow the determination of antigen-specific αβ T cells during infections by a variety of pathogens. All these approaches will be extended to BG molecules, which may help harness both regulation of αβ T cells and innate-like immune responses of γδ T cells, a field at the forefront of mammalian immunology and just beginning to be examined in avian immunology. The individual research projects within FOR5130 benefit from the collaborations among each other and provide a better insight into the immune system of chickens in relation to important pathogens.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5130: ImmunoChick- Unravelling the avian immune response in the context of infection
• International Connection: United Kingdom