Examining the role of immune activation in transposon-triggered sterility.

抽象的。 不孕不育是一个影响五分之一夫妇的问题，但在30%的病例中，不孕的原因尚不清楚。 对配子发育的一个威胁是称为内源性转座子的子集的活动。 逆转录病毒(ERV)。ERV具有自我复制的能力，有时还能动员，创造新的基因组 同一单元格甚至相邻单元格中的插入。以前的研究已经证明，在 果蝇，ERV在发育中的卵泡细胞内的激活会导致不育。目前的解释是 对于ERV触发的不孕症，假设ERV从卵泡细胞迁移到卵母细胞并插入 进入新的基因组位置，破坏DNA的完整性。然而，我们的实验室没有发现任何证据表明 ERV插入到卵母细胞基因组中，表明不孕症可能是由于 机制(S)。在这里，我们对转座子引发的不育症提出了另一种解释：我们假设 ERV去抑制通过激活异常的免疫反应导致不孕不育。我们发现 尽管ERV过度活跃，但关键免疫途径成分的耗尽拯救了生育能力。这些数据提供了 转座子引发的不育症可能是由于免疫激活而不是体内DNA损伤的证据 卵母细胞。这项提案试图调查免疫系统如何识别ERV，以及这是否 免疫反应会导致不孕症。最终，这些发现可能会提供另一种解释 ERV引发的不孕不育以及促进我们对ERV如何影响人类健康的理解。

ABSTRACT. Infertility is a problem that affects one out of five couples, yet the cause of sterility is unknown in 30% of cases. One threat to viable gamete development is activity of a subset of transposons known as endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). ERVs have the ability to self-replicate and sometimes mobilize, creating new genomic insertions within the same cell or even neighboring cells. Previous studies have demonstrated that, in Drosophila, ERV activation within the follicle cells of developing eggs causes sterility. The current explanation for ERV-triggered sterility postulates that ERVs migrate from the follicle cells into the oocyte and insert themselves into new genomic loci, damaging DNA integrity. However, our lab has found no evidence of novel ERV insertions being made into the oocyte genome, suggesting sterility may arise from uncharacterized mechanism(s). Here, we propose an alternative explanation for transposon-triggered sterility: we hypothesize that ERV derepression induces sterility through activation of an aberrant immune response. We found that depletion of key immune pathway components rescued fertility despite ERV hyperactivity. These data provide evidence that transposon-triggered sterility may be due to immune activation rather than DNA damage within the oocyte. This proposal seeks to investigate how the immune system recognizes ERVs and whether that immune response can cause sterility. Ultimately, these findings may provide an alternative explanation for ERV-triggered sterility as well as advance our understanding of how ERVs impact human health.