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DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Ecologically variable immunity and its consequences for parasite dynamics

论文研究：生态变异免疫及其对寄生虫动态的影响

基本信息

批准号：
1701515
负责人：
Carla Caceres
金额：
$ 2.05万
依托单位：
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2017
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2017-06-01 至 2021-05-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1701515&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
DISSERTATION RESEARCH Ecologically variable immunity

项目摘要

An important goal of researchers who predict disease epidemics is to know how the parasites that cause them move through a population of hosts. In making predictions about epidemics, people consider how and when susceptible and infected hosts come into contact with one another, but they generally do not consider what happens after the parasite gets inside its host. However, the within-host battles between host and parasite could also be important for disease spread. These within-host battles happen because a host's body is constantly resisting and defending against parasites. It is important to consider these dynamics in predicting disease dynamics because not all hosts are equally equipped to fend off parasites and diseases. Ultimately, hosts that have lower immunity are more likely to allow parasites to spread. In this project, the researcher will focus on populations of an invertebrate that lives in lakes in which they experience large parasite epidemics every year. The researcher will improve our understanding of disease spread by incorporating information about how variability in immunity affects it with host-to-host contact information. The results of this project will help scientists better understand the importance of immune defenses when parasites infect humans, farm animals, and wildlife populations. It will also enable the training of a graduate student, and support projects aimed at encouraging underrepresented minority, female and low-income undergraduate and grade school students to be involved in science.Our understanding of how ecological and immunological factors interact in natural populations to determine both an individual's probability of infection and the subsequent overall disease prevalence remains limited. Working with a model host-parasite system (Daphnia host and fungal parasite), this research examines the mechanisms underlying immune function, as well as the consequences of variable immunity for parasite transmission. Specifically, the researcher will examine how environmental stressors (e.g. resource quality and availability) shape natural Daphnia populations' mean levels of and variation in immune function. The establishment and spread of the highly virulent parasite within these populations will then be quantified, while tracking each population's levels of exposure and infection success through time. The research relies on tools from multiple disciplines, including ecology, quantitative biology, transcriptomics, and immunology. Moreover, the project integrates theories from disease ecology and ecological immunology to examine disease processes across scales: from the genome, to the individual, to the population and community.

预测疾病流行的研究人员的一个重要目标是了解引起疾病的寄生虫如何在宿主群体中移动。在对流行病进行预测时，人们会考虑易感宿主和受感染宿主如何以及何时相互接触，但他们通常不会考虑寄生虫进入宿主体内后会发生什么。然而，宿主和寄生虫之间的宿主内战斗对疾病传播也很重要。这些宿主内的战斗发生是因为宿主的身体不断抵抗和防御寄生虫。在预测疾病动态时考虑这些动态是很重要的，因为并非所有宿主都同样具备抵御寄生虫和疾病的能力。最终，免疫力较低的宿主更有可能允许寄生虫传播。在这个项目中，研究人员将重点关注生活在湖泊中的无脊椎动物的种群，这些湖泊每年都会经历大规模的寄生虫流行。研究人员将通过将免疫变异性如何影响疾病传播的信息与宿主对宿主的接触信息结合起来，提高我们对疾病传播的理解。该项目的结果将帮助科学家更好地了解寄生虫感染人类，农场动物和野生动物种群时免疫防御的重要性。它还将使研究生的培训，并支持旨在鼓励代表性不足的少数民族，女性和低收入的本科生和小学生参与科学的项目，我们的理解如何生态和免疫因素在自然人群中相互作用，以确定个人的感染概率和随后的整体疾病流行仍然有限。本研究以宿主-寄生虫系统（水蚤宿主和真菌寄生虫）为模型，探讨了免疫功能的机制，以及寄生虫传播的可变免疫力的后果。具体来说，研究人员将研究环境压力（例如资源质量和可用性）如何塑造天然水蚤种群的平均水平和免疫功能的变化。然后将对这些人群中高毒力寄生虫的建立和传播进行量化，同时跟踪每个人群的暴露水平和感染成功率。该研究依赖于多个学科的工具，包括生态学，定量生物学，转录组学和免疫学。此外，该项目整合了疾病生态学和生态免疫学的理论，以研究从基因组到个体，再到人群和社区的疾病过程。