PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Researchers discover how the body uses vitamin B to recognize bacterial infection

2012-10-11
(Press-News.org) An Australian research team has discovered how specialised immune cells recognise products of vitamin B synthesis that are unique to bacteria and yeast, triggering the body to fight infection.

The finding opens up potential targets to improve treatments or to develop a vaccine for tuberculosis.

The study, jointly led by the University of Melbourne and Monash University and published today in the journal Nature, has revealed for the first time that the highly abundant mucosal associated invariant T cells (MAIT cells), recognise products of vitamin B synthesis from bacteria and yeast in an early step to activating the immune system.

The research revealed how by-products of bacterial vitamin synthesis, including some derived from Folic acid or vitamin B9 and Riboflavin or vitamin B2, could be captured by the immune receptor MR1 thus fine-tuning the activity of MAIT cells.

Dr Lars Kjer-Nielsen from the University of Melbourne led the five year study.

"Humans are unable to make vitamin B and obtain it mostly from diet. Because bacteria can synthesise vitamin B, our immune system uses this as a point of difference to recognise infection," he said.

"Given the relative abundance of the MAIT cells lining mucosal and other surfaces, such as the intestine, the mouth, lungs, it is quite probable that they play a protective role in many infections from thrush to tuberculosis.

"This is a significant discovery that unravels the long sought target of MAIT cells and their role in immunity to infection."

Professor James McCluskey of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne said the discovery opened up opportunities for vaccine development and other potential therapeutics.

"This is a major breakthrough in which Australian researchers have beaten many strong research teams around the world, becoming the first to unlock the mystery of what drives a key component of our immune system," he said.

Monash University's Professor Jamie Rossjohn said the findings had major implications for understanding the interplay between gut bacteria and the immune system.

"Some vitamin by-products appear to drive immunity while others dampen it," Professor Rossjohn said.

The next step is to explore whether MAIT cells might also be involved in intestinal or mucosal disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome.

"This discovery now cracks open a new field in immunology and we can expect many research groups to focus their attention on this system," Professor Rossjohn said.

"The discovery also involved collaborators at Melbourne's Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, Metabolomics Australia and the University of Queensland, reflecting the importance of collaboration between researchers to be globally competitive," Professor McCluskey said.

### The research was supported by the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Making crowdsourcing more reliable

2012-10-11
Researchers from the University of Southampton are designing incentives for collection and verification of information to make crowdsourcing more reliable. Crowdsourcing is a process of outsourcing tasks to the public, rather than to employees or contractors. In recent years, crowdsourcing has provided an unprecedented ability to accomplish tasks that require the involvement of a large number of people, often across wide-spread geographies, expertise, or interests. The world's largest encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, is an example of a task that can only be achieved through ...

Testosterone increases honesty

2012-10-11
Testosterone is considered THE male hormone, standing for aggression and posturing. Researchers around Prof. Dr. Armin Falk, an economist from the University of Bonn, have now been able to demonstrate that this sex hormone surprisingly also fosters social behavior. In play situations, subjects who had received testosterone clearly lied less frequently than individuals who had only received a placebo. The results have just been published in the Public Library of Science's international online journal "PLoS ONE." The hormone testosterone stands for typically male attributes ...

Melanoma - The wolf in sheep's clothing

2012-10-11
Melanoma is so dangerous because it tends to metastasize early on. New treatment approaches utilize, among other things, the ability of the immune defense to search out and destroy malignant cells. Yet this strategy is often only temporarily effective. A research team under the direction of Bonn University has discovered why this is the case: In the inflammatory reaction caused by the treatment, the tumor cells temporarily alter their external characteristics and thus become invisible to defense cells. This knowledge forms an important foundation for the improvement of ...

High levels of blood-based protein specific to mesothelioma

2012-10-11
NEW YORK, October 11, 2012 – Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have discovered the protein product of a little-known gene may one day prove useful in identifying and monitoring the development of mesothelioma in early stages, when aggressive treatment can have an impact on the progression of disease and patient prognosis. "This gene produces a protein, fibulin-3, that is present in levels four to five times higher in the plasma of patients with mesothelioma compared to levels in asbestos-exposed patients or patients with several other conditions that cause tumors ...

The best of both catalytic worlds

The best of both catalytic worlds
2012-10-11
Catalysts are substances that speed up the rates of chemical reactions without themselves being chemically changed. Industrial catalysts come in two main types - heterogeneous, in which the catalyst is in a different phase from the reactants; and homogeneous, in which catalyst and the reactants are in the same phase. Heterogeneous catalysts are valued for their sustainability because they can be recycled. Homogeneous catalysts are valued for their product selectivity as their properties can be easily tuned through relatively simple chemistry. Researchers with the U.S. ...

Mine your business: Text mining insights from social media

2012-10-11
NEW YORK - October 10, 2012 - Thanks to blogs, online forums, and product review sites, companies and marketers now have access to a seemingly endless array of data on consumers' opinions and experiences. In principle, businesses should be able to use this information to gain a better understanding of the general market and of their own and their competitors' customers. Yet this wealth of consumer-generated content can be both a blessing and a curse. A new approach, described in a study by Oded Netzer, the Philip H. Geier Jr. Associate Professor at Columbia Business School, ...

Light might prompt graphene devices on demand

Light might prompt graphene devices on demand
2012-10-11
HOUSTON – (Oct. 10, 2012) – Rice University researchers are doping graphene with light in a way that could lead to the more efficient design and manufacture of electronics, as well as novel security and cryptography devices. Manufacturers chemically dope silicon to adjust its semiconducting properties. But the breakthrough reported in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano details a novel concept: plasmon-induced doping of graphene, the ultrastrong, highly conductive, single-atom-thick form of carbon. That could facilitate the instant creation of circuitry – ...

Fly like an eagle: New launch and recovery system takes UAV into the future

2012-10-11
A shipboard-capable system designed to support both the launch and recovery of the Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully completed final demonstration flight testing Sept. 27 at a testing range in eastern Oregon. Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Compact Launch and Recovery System (CLRE) will provide a small-scale solution for the unmanned surveillance craft's operations. "This system's shipboard capability is unique," said John Kinzer, who manages ONR's Air Vehicle Technology Program. "It's more compact than other systems, so you ...

Improving nanometer-scale manufacturing with infrared spectroscopy

Improving nanometer-scale manufacturing with infrared spectroscopy
2012-10-11
One of the key achievements of the nanotechnology era is the development of manufacturing technologies that can fabricate nanostructures formed from multiple materials. Such nanometer-scale integration of composite materials has enabled innovations in electronic devices, solar cells, and medical diagnostics. While there have been significant breakthroughs in nano-manufacturing, there has been much less progress on measurement technologies that can provide information about nanostructures made from multiple integrated materials. Researchers at the University of Illinois ...

The good, the bad, and the guilty: Anticipating feelings of guilt predicts ethical behavior

2012-10-11
From politics to finance, government to education, ethics-related scandals seem to crop up with considerable regularity. As whistleblowers and investigative journalists bring these scandals to light, one can't help but wonder: Are there specific character traits that predispose people to unethical behavior? Converging evidence suggests that the answer could be guilt proneness. In a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Taya Cohen and Nazli Turan of Carnegie Mellon University and ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Milky Way-like galaxy M83 consumes high-speed clouds

Study: What we learned from record-breaking 2021 heat wave and what we can expect in the future

Transforming treatment outcomes for people with OCD

Damage from smoke and respiratory viruses mitigated in mice via a common signaling pathway

New software tool could help better understand childhood cancer

Healthy lifestyle linked to lower diverticulitis risk, irrespective of genetic susceptibility

Women 65+ still at heightened risk of cervical cancer caused by HPV

‘Inflammatory’ diet during pregnancy may raise child’s diabetes type 1 risk

Effective therapies needed to halt rise in eco-anxiety, says psychology professor

Nature-friendly farming boosts biodiversity and yields but may require new subsidies

Against the odds: Endometriosis linked to four times higher pregnancy rates than other causes of infertility, new study reveals

Microplastics discovered in human reproductive fluids, new study reveals

Family ties and firm performance: How cousin marriage traditions shape informal businesses in Africa

Novel flu vaccine adjuvant improves protection against influenza viruses, study finds

Manipulation of light at the nanoscale helps advance biosensing

New mechanism discovered in ovarian cancer peritoneal metastasis: YWHAB restriction drives stemness and chemoresistance

New study links blood metabolites and immune cells to increased risk of urolithiasis

Pyruvate identified as a promising therapeutic agent for ulcerative colitis by targeting cytosolic phospholipase A2

New insights into the clinical impact of IKBKG mutations: Understanding the mechanisms behind rare immunodeficiency syndromes

Displays, imaging and sensing: New blue fluorophore breaks efficiency records in both solids and solutions

Sugar, the hidden thermostat in plants

Personality can explain why some CEOs earn higher salaries

This puzzle game shows kids how they’re smarter than AI

Study suggests remembrances of dead played role in rise of architecture in Andean region

Brain stimulation can boost math learning in people with weaker neural connections

Inhibiting enzyme could halt cell death in Parkinson’s disease, study finds

Neurotechnology reverses biological disadvantage in maths learning

UNDER EMBARGO: Neurotechnology reverses biological disadvantage in maths learning

Scientists target ‘molecular machine’ in the war against antimicrobial resistance

Extending classical CNOP method for deep-learning atmospheric and oceanic forecasting

[Press-News.org] Researchers discover how the body uses vitamin B to recognize bacterial infection