Abstract
Invertebrates lack adaptive immunity and have to rely on innate immune reactions and one such reaction is the prophenoloxidase activating system, which have been mainly studied by me and my team in crayfish. This application will use the white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) and crayfish as a model to understand in general how virus affect the immune system in invertebrates and specifically how a virus infection affects the immune system in crayfish by identifying genes which are affected in their expression by the virus with the use of subtractive hybridisation. Interesting genes will be subjected to functional characterisation. We will also determine whether signal crayfish carrying the crayfish plague are more vulnerable to this virus than noble crayfish and the mechanism by which the WSSV does not kill crayfish at low temperature but at temperatures at ca 18-20C. We can also use a stem cell culture which we recently have developed. In this cell culture we can propagate this virus and thus we can study in detail the interaction between this virus and the cells. Hardly anything is known about how virus interacts with invertebrates and their immune system and it is hoped that this model system may provide such knowledge.I will also investigate if there is a difference in immune defence between Astacus astacus and Pacifastacus leniusculus challenged with the crayfish plague fungus by using molecular tools such as subtractive hybridisation and micro-array.
Sweden