51视频

07/16/2019
By Edwin L. Aguirre

51视频 researchers are studying fish with tapeworm parasites with the goal of improving our knowledge of the human immune system.

The research team, led by Asst. Prof. Natalie Steinel of the Department of Biological Sciences is studying the interactions between the host and parasites in fish to understand how the fish鈥檚 immune system can be manipulated.

鈥淚f we can find out how a parasite can modify the host鈥檚 immune response, we could potentially target those same pathways to design new immunosuppressive drugs for humans,鈥� says Steinel, who is the principal investigator for the project.

鈥淔ish are a major food source for people, so a better understanding of how their immune systems work will also benefit aquaculture and contribute to the production of a healthy food supply,鈥� she says.

The research is funded through a five-year grant totaling $1.25 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

For the study, Steinel and her team use the (scientific name: Gasterosteus aculeatus), which is found mainly in marine coastal waters and freshwater bodies throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

鈥淪ticklebacks are a great and well-established model system for studying host-parasite interactions,鈥� notes Steinel. 鈥淭hey are infected in nature with a tapeworm known as Schistocephalus solidus, which we鈥檝e found can suppress the immune system of some sticklebacks.鈥�

The fish are kept in a new lab facility in the basement of Olsen Hall on North Campus that features a central circulation and filtration system as well as water treatment and UV disinfection systems. The lab鈥檚 aquarium system has 210 tanks with a centralized control system for monitoring and adjusting the water鈥檚 pH, conductivity and temperature. Sticklebacks are found in relatively cold environments, so the water temperature is maintained at 17掳 Celsius (63掳 Fahrenheit), according to Steinel.

鈥淢y lab specializes in fish immunobiology. Scientists know a lot about the immune system of mammals, but our knowledge of the immune systems of other vertebrates is less in-depth. One of the major goals of my lab is to develop the tools to study the fish immune system and how it responds to infection,鈥� she says.

Steinel is specifically interested in the interplay and co-evolution of hosts and pathogens. The lab investigates not only how the immune system of the fish can fight off parasites, but also how those infectious pathogens manipulate the host鈥檚 immune response.

Ecoimmunology Research

鈥淢y research is unique in that we can take what we鈥檝e learned in the lab and study how the fish immune response functions in populations found in nature. Because the immune response is so influenced by the environment of the host organism, the immune response of animals raised in the lab is often very different from what happens in the real world,鈥� explains Steinel.

She describes much of what her lab does as 鈥渆coimmunology,鈥� or the intersection of the fields of immunology, ecology and evolutionary biology. By studying the immune response of fish in the wild, the team can better understand variation in immune functions and how the immune response of one species can influence an entire ecosystem.

Steinel is collaborating with researchers from the University of Alaska Anchorage, the University of Connecticut and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

Under the grant, Steinel鈥檚 lab is conducting fieldwork on natural stickleback populations on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. 鈥淭his summer, we are also studying Alaskan sticklebacks, and next year, we plan to expand our field research to New England and Icelandic stickleback populations,鈥� she says.

Assisting Steinel in the research are biology graduate students Saraswathy Vaidyanathan, Maria Baez Calderon and Alexandra Collias, public health summer grad student Olivia Smith, biology undergraduates Erica Giuffrida, Gordon Sears, Trevor Cordwell, Princess Paul, Andrea Albano, Elsa Diffo Tiayo and Mirna Gouhar and summer Immersive Scholars Maeve Moynihan and Sonia Shah.