Faculty Candidate Seminar 1/7/16:

Title: “What can sharks teach us about the evolution of immunity?”

Speaker: 
Dr. Helen Dooley, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, UK

Abstract: 
For the past 12 years my research has focussed upon trying to understand how the immune system and its component molecules evolved. To do this I use a comparative approach, examining a specific molecule or immune mechanism in different species across phylogeny to look for shared features and/or general rules governing their function. A key part of this are my studies on the immune system of the cartilaginous fishes (sharks, skates, rays and chimera), the most ancient group with a ‘mammalian-like’ adaptive immune system. My early work showed that sharks mount a highly complex, multi-layered serum antibody response, complete with affinity maturation and immunological memory, following antigen encounter. I also showed that highly specific, highly stable single domain binding proteins based upon the novel shark antibody IgNAR had utility as a specific and robust diagnostic/therapeutic agent, work that led to the licensing of this technology for further development by a global pharma company.

My present work builds upon this by tracing the evolutionary history of selected immune signalling and effector molecules; ongoing projects include the characterisation of cytokines involved in B cell development/maintenance and their receptors, T cell signalling pathways and complement system components in sharks. To facilitate our work we have generated a large, multi-tissue catshark transcriptome and are developing a proteomics platform that should enable us to accurately quantify >100 different proteins over the course of an immune response, thus allowing us (and others in the comparative immunology field) to study global immune responses without needing to raise species-/target-specific monoclonal antibodies.

Host: Dr. Russell Hill, Ph.D.