Skip to main content
News Netea 10.2021
left: Prof. Dr. Mihai G. Netea; right: Prof. Dr. Andreas Schlitzer
© Mihai Netea / Uni Bonn

Publication

Epigenetics: Immunization is passed on to offspring

Adaptations to infection shown to be passed on over several generations in mice

Does an infection affect the immunity of subsequent generations? Prof. Andeas Schlitzer, member of ImmunoSensation2 and the Life & Medical Sciences Institute (LIMES) at the University of Bonn, Prof. Dr. Mihai G. Netea from Radboud University (Netherlands), together with researchers from Saarland University, Lausanne (Switzerland) and Athens (Greece), have investigated this. Mouse sires that either had previously overcome infection with fungi or were stimulated with fungal substances, passed on their improved protection over several generations. The team simultaneously demonstrated an improved immune response that was passed on to the offspring. The study has now been published in Nature Immunology.

The scientists infected male mice with thrush fungi (Candida albicans). After surviving the infection, the animals were mated with completely healthy females. The researchers compared the resulting children with offspring from pairs of mice that had not previously been infected with Candida. To experimentally examine the status of the immune system, the team infected the males of the subsequent generation of mice with coliform bacteria. The offspring of the male mice previously exposed to Candida were found to be significantly better protected from subsequent E. coli infection than the offspring of the uninfected male mice. This effect was still evident in the next generation.


Publication

Natalie Katzmarski, Jorge Domínguez-Andrés, Branko Cirovic, Georgios Renieris, Eleonora Ciarlo, Didier Le Roy, Konstantin Lepikhov, Kathrin Kattler, Gilles Gasparoni, Kristian Händler, Heidi Theis, Marc Beyer, Jos W. M. van der Meer, Leo A. B. Joosten, Jörn Walter, Joachim L. Schultze, Thierry Roger, Evangelos J. Giamarellos-Bourboulis, Andreas Schlitzer, Mihai G. Netea: Transmission of trained immunity and heterologous resistance to infections across generations, Nature Immunology, DOI: 10.1038/s41590-021-01052-7.


Contact

Prof. Dr. Andreas Schlitzer

Quantitative Systembiologie

LIMES-Institut (Life and Medical Sciences Bonn)

Universität Bonn

Tel. +49 2287362847

E-Mail: andreas.schlitzer(at)uni-bonn.de


Prof. Dr. Mihai G. Netea

Radboud university medical center und
LIMES-Institut der Universität Bonn

Tel. +31 243618819

E-Mail: Mihai.Netea(at)radboudumc.nl

Related news

Precise Konsortium

Publication Honors & Funding

Making Cancer Cells More Predictable: PRECISE Aims to Forecast Therapeutically Actionable Vulnerabilities

—Which genes and signaling pathways does a cancer cell require to survive? And which of these could serve as therapeutic targets? The pan-European initiative PRECISE aims to identify such vulnerabilities not only through labor-intensive laboratory experiments but also by predicting them using computational models. The UKB and the University of Bonn, represented by Prof. Dr. Maximilian Billmann and Prof. Dr. Jonathan Schmid-Burgk, are among the founding partners of the consortium. The scientific vision of the initiative has now been published in a commentary in Nature Genetics.
View entry
Bild

Publication

Focus on the Guardians of the Antibody Response

—For the immune system to effectively combat pathogens, antibody responses must be precisely controlled. So-called follicular regulatory T cells (Tfr cells) play a key role in this process by limiting excessive immune responses and helping to maintain immune tolerance. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have now developed a robust laboratory method that allows Tfr cells to be generated from precursor cells and studied in a targeted manner. The results were recently published in the journal Cellular & Molecular Immunology.
View entry
Bunte Spirale

Publication

When the map needs an update

—Every time we move through a familiar environment, the hippocampus consults an internal map, a detailed spatial representation that is built up through repeated experience. But what happens when something unexpected occurs on a well-known route? Researchers at the UKB and the University of Bonn were able to demonstrate in a mouse model that the brain does not redraw its maps from scratch. Instead, it annotates them: preserving the underlying spatial layout while overlaying new information on top of the existing map. Their findings have now been published in the journal PNAS.
View entry

Back to the news overview