Signalling C-Type Lectins in Antimicrobial Immunity

Funding: This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council and the University of Aberdeen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The hidden cost of modern medical interventions:how medical advances have shaped the prevalence of human fungal disease

Life expectancy in the West is the highest it has ever been, due to the introduction of better hygiene practices and sophisticated medical interventions for cancer, autoimmunity and infectious disease. With these modern advances, a rise in the prevalence of opportunistic infections has also been observed. These include several fungal infections, which present a particular clinical challenge due to the lack of fungal vaccines, limited diagnostics and increasing antifungal drug resistance. This mini-review outlines how modern-day clinical practices have shaped the recent increase in fungal diseases observed in the last few decades. We discuss new research that has implicated the use of immune-modulating drugs in the enhanced susceptibility of vulnerable patients to life-threatening fungal infections

Cutting Edge : Failure of Antigen-Specific CD4+ T Cell Recruitment to the Kidney during Systemic Candidiasis

Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Acknowledgments We thank E. Bolton and H. Bagavant for reagents and advice. We also acknowledge the staff of the Medical Research Facility at the University of Aberdeen for care of the animals used in this study. This work was supported by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Candida albicans colonization and dissemination from the murine gastrointestinal tract : the influence of morphology and Th17 immunity

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (086558, 080088, 102705), a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award (097377) and a studentship from the University of Aberdeen. D.K. was supported by grant 5R01AI083344 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and by a Voelcker Young Investigator Award from the Max and Minnie Tomerlin Voelcker Fund.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Prey encounters and spatial memory influence use of foraging patches in a marine central place forager

This study was carried out as part of the Moray Firth Marine Mammal Monitoring Programme, a joint industry, academic and government strategic research project with funding from Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd and Moray Offshore Renewables Ltd (MORL).Given the patchiness and long-term predictability of marine resources, memory of high-quality foraging grounds is expected to provide fitness advantages for central place foragers. However, it remains challenging to characterize how marine predators integrate memory with recent prey encounters to adjust fine-scale movement and use of foraging patches. Here, we used two months of movement data from harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) to quantify the repeatability in foraging patches as a proxy for memory. We then integrated these data into analyses of fine-scale movement and underwater behaviour to test how both spatial memory and prey encounter rates influenced the seals' area-restricted search (ARS) behaviour. Specifically, we used one month's GPS data from 29 individuals to build spatial memory maps of searched areas and archived accelerometery data from a subset of five individuals to detect prey catch attempts, a proxy for prey encounters. Individuals were highly consistent in the areas they visited over two consecutive months. Hidden Markov models showed that both spatial memory and prey encounters increased the probability of seals initiating ARS. These results provide evidence that predators use memory to adjust their fine-scale movement, and this ability should be accounted for in movement models.PostprintPeer reviewe

The Expression of Petunia Strigolactone Pathway Genes is Altered as Part of the Endogenous Developmental Program

Analysis of mutants with increased branching has revealed the strigolactone synthesis/perception pathway which regulates branching in plants. However, whether variation in this well conserved developmental signaling system contributes to the unique plant architectures of different species is yet to be determined. We examined petunia orthologs of the Arabidopsis MAX1 and MAX2 genes to characterize their role in petunia architecture. A single ortholog of MAX1, PhMAX1 which encodes a cytochrome P450, was identified and was able to complement the max1 mutant of Arabidopsis. Petunia has two copies of the MAX2 gene, PhMAX2A and PhMAX2B which encode F-Box proteins. Differences in the transcript levels of these two MAX2-like genes suggest diverging functions. Unlike PhMAX2B, PhMAX2A mRNA levels change in leaves of differing age/position on the plant. Nonetheless, this gene functionally complements the Arabidopsis max2 mutant indicating that the biochemical activity of the PhMAX2A protein is not significantly different from MAX2. The expression of the petunia strigolactone pathway genes (PhCCD7, PhCCD8, PhMAX1, PhMAX2A, and PhMAX2B) was then further investigated throughout the development of wild-type petunia plants. Three of these genes showed changes in mRNA levels over a development series. Alterations to the expression patterns of these genes may influence the branching growth habit of plants by changing strigolactone production and/or sensitivity. These changes could allow both subtle and dramatic changes to branching within and between species