Jagadeesh Bayry

Biological Sciences and Engineering

J. Trinath

M.S. Maddur

S.V. Kaveri

K.N. Balaji

Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Journal of Infectious Diseases

The signaling pathways activated following interaction between dendritic cells (DCs) and a pathogen determine the polarization of effector T-cell and regulatory T-cell (Treg) responses to the infection. Several recent studies, mostly in the context of bacterial infections, have shown that the Wnt/b-catenin pathway plays a major role in imparting tolerogenic features in DCs and in promotion of Treg responses. However, the significance of the Wnt/b-catenin pathway's involvement in regulating the immune response to the fungal species is not known. Using Aspergillus fumigatus, a ubiquitous airborne opportunistic fungal species, we show here that fungi activate the Wnt/b-catenin pathway in human DCs and are critical for mediating the immunosuppressive Treg responses. Pharmacological inhibition of this pathway in DCs led to inhibition of maturation-associated molecules and interleukin 10 (IL-10) secretion without affecting the majority of the inflammatory cytokines. Furthermore, blockade of Wnt signaling in DCs suppressed DC-mediated Treg responses in CD41 T cells and downregulated both tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a) and IL-10 responses in CD81 T cells. Mechanistically, induction of b-catenin pathway by A. fumigatus required C-type lectin receptors and promoted Treg polarization via the induction of programmed death-ligand 1 on DCs. Further investigation on the identity of fungal molecular patterns has revealed that the cell wall polysaccharides b-(1, 3)-glucan and a-(1, 3)-glucan, but not chitin, possess the capacity to activate the b-catenin pathway. Our data suggest that the Wnt/b-catenin pathway is a potential therapeutic target to selectively suppress the Treg response and to sustain the protective Th1 response in the context of invasive aspergillosis caused by A. fumigatus. © 2021 American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Fulltext

mBio

Wnt-b-Catenin Signaling in Human Dendritic Cells Mediates Regulatory T-Cell Responses to Fungi via the PD-L1 Pathway

Hedgehog (HH) signaling is a significant regulator of cell fate decisions during embryogenesis, development, and perpetuation of various disease conditions. Testing whether pathogen-specific HH signaling promotes unique innate recognition of intracellular bacteria, we demonstrate that among diverse Gram-positive or Gram-negative microbes, Mycobacterium bovis BCG, a vaccine strain, elicits a robust activation of Sonic HH (SHH) signaling in macrophages. Interestingly, sustained tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) secretion by macrophages was essential for robust SHH activation, as TNF-α-/- macrophages exhibited compromised ability to activate SHH signaling. Neutralization of TNF-α or blockade of TNF-α receptor signaling significantly reduced the infection-induced SHH signaling activation both in vitro and in vivo. Intriguingly, activated SHH signaling downregulated M. bovis BCG-mediated Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) signaling events to regulate a battery of genes associated with divergent functions of M1/M2 macrophages. Genome-wide expression profiling as well as conventional gain-of-function or loss of- function analysis showed that SHH signaling-responsive microRNA 31 (miR-31) and miR-150 target MyD88, an adaptor protein of TLR2 signaling, thus leading to suppression of TLR2 responses. SHH signaling signatures could be detected in vivo in tuberculosis patients and M. bovis BCG-challenged mice. Collectively, these investigations identify SHH signaling to be what we believe is one of the significant regulators of host-pathogen interactions. © 2013, American Society for Microbiology.

Molecular and Cellular Biology

Sonic hedgehog-dependent induction of MicroRNA 31 and MicroRNA 150 regulates mycobacterium bovis BCG-driven toll-like receptor 2 signaling

Mycobacterium tuberculosis promotes regulatory T-Cell expansion via induction of programmed death-1 ligand 1 (PD-L1, CD274) on dendritic cells

Journal	Journal of Infectious Diseases
Publisher	OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
ISSN	00221899
Open Access	No