Determination of the life span of inflammatory dendritic cells

• Main Author: Tay, Yong Long
• Other Authors: Ruedl Christiane
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Biological sciences::Molecular biology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60632
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Dendritic cells (DCs) are highly efficient antigens presenting cells (APCs) which are responsible in processing and presenting antigens to naïve T-cells thereby activating the adaptive immune response. Being recognized as an essential mediator between the innate and adaptive immunity during inflammation until recently, DC is found to have a major role in intestinal immune responses. With its ability to orchestrate between tolerance and immunity in the gut, DC deregulations contribute to inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. A novel DC subset, Plet-1+ DCs, discovered by Ruedl’s laboratory have been under extensive characterization to understand its role during inflammation. Due to the lack of a proper Plet-1 knockout mice model previously, cell ablation study of Plet-1+ DCs was not possible. By taking advantage of the newly generated chimeric mice, in this study, we aim to elucidate the turnover rate of Plet-1+ DC in both steady state and inflammatory condition. Our results established the turnover rate for steady state and DSS-induced colitis to be 5 and 3 days respectively. Furthermore, we revealed the localization of Plet-1+ DC in PP and colon using immunohistological staining consistent to the result in the previous studies. More importantly, we demonstrated the presence of Plet-1+ DCs in brain of P.berghei infected mice which open up a new disease model for the characterization of Plet-1+ DCs. In conclusion, our findings on the turnover rate of Plet-1+ DC can be used in future studies to maintain the ablation of this population for its characterization during steady state and DSS-induced inflammation.