Immune Evasion by F. tularensis

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this proposal is to understand the strategies used by F. tularensis to evade the immune response, and to ultimately devise ways to defeat the immune evasion by the bacteria. F. tularensis is a gram-negative, facultative intracellular bacterium. This bacteria require only a very low infective dose via aerosol infection, and has a long lifetime in the environment. Although F. tularensis infection in the US is not highly prevalent, it has the potential to become an important pathogen especially following intentional release. While the immune response to F. tularensis has not been well studied, it does require T cells for clearance of infection and resistance to reinfection. Our preliminary work shows that like many viruses and some bacteria, F. tularensis has evolved multiple strategies for evading the host innate and adaptive immune response. Two of these, the production of PGE2 by infected host cells and the down-regulation of MHC class I on infected cells are the targets for study in this proposal. In this application we propose to understand the genetic and molecular basis for these two forms of immune evasion.