Immunology of Marek's disease virus infection in the chicken

动物传染病对人类和动物健康具有重要意义。此外，这些疾病对食用动物产业造成重大的经济损失。 马立克氏病（MD）是由病毒（马立克氏病病毒或MDV）引起的鸡的疾病，并且以淋巴瘤或免疫系统细胞癌的形成为特征。该疾病为研究免疫系统和控制免疫介质的基因在赋予疾病抵抗力中的作用提供了独特的模型。对MD的抗性是遗传控制的，并且已经显示出几个基因在免疫中起作用。此外，这可能是第一个可以获得商业疫苗的癌症。然而，对疾病抵抗力的免疫学机制知之甚少。本研究拟从分子和细胞水平研究鸡对MDV感染的免疫应答的诱导和调控。免疫系统的细胞，如T细胞，已被证明在保护免受病毒侵害方面是重要的。本项目的目的是：1-阐明T细胞在抗MD免疫中的作用，2-了解T细胞如何和在哪里看到MDV并对其作出反应，3-研究控制T细胞对MDV免疫反应的基因，4-研究基因与MD免疫之间的因果关系。预计拟议研究的结果将扩大我们对宿主-病原体相互作用的理解，也将为未来的研究奠定基础，这些研究旨在进行抗病性遗传选择和设计针对传染病的预防策略，其中考虑到宿主遗传结构。

Animal infectious diseases are of great importance to human and animal health. Moreover, these diseases impose significant economic losses to the food animal industry.   Marek's disease (MD) is a disease of chickens caused by a virus, Marek's disease virus or MDV, and marked by formation of lymphomas, or cancer of immune system cells. This disease provides a unique model for studying the role of immune system and the genes, which control the immune mediators, in conferring resistance to disease. Resistance to MD is genetically controlled and several genes have been shown to play a role in immunity. Moreover, this is probably the first cancer against which a commercial vaccine became available. However, little is known about the immunological mechanisms of resistance to disease. The proposed program is intended to investigate, at the molecular and cellular levels, induction and regulation of chicken immune response against MDV infection. Cells of the immune system, such as T cells, have been shown to be important in protection against viral insults. The objectives of this program are: 1- To elucidate the role of T cells in immunity against MD, 2- To understand how and where T cells see MDV and respond to it, 3- To study the genes that control T cell immune response to MDV, 4- To investigate the cause and effect relationship between genes and immunity to MD. It is expected that findings of the proposed studies will expand our understanding of host-pathogen interactions and will also layout the foundation for future studies aimed at genetic selection for disease resistance and design of prophylactic strategies against infectious disease, which take into account host genetic constitution.