Speaker:  Prof Philippe Jay, Team Leader, Department Cancer Biology, Institute of Functional Genomics of Lyon (IGFL). Montpelier, will present seminar entitled: Tuft cells: epithelial sentinels linking luminal danger to immune responses

Host: Aimée Parker

Abstract:

Gut homeostasis relies on a tight regulation of inflammation according to luminal clues. Although the intestinal epithelium is in direct contact with the microbes, parasites and potentially allergenic, mutagenic and toxic compounds derived from our diet, little is known about the contribution of epithelial cells to instruct stroma-located immune cells and regulate their behaviour. We characterized the intestinal epithelial tuft cells, a neglected cell type of the mammalian intestinal epithelium, and demonstrated their essential role in initiating immune defence responses against helminth parasites. This constitutes the first known function for the intestinal tuft cells and represents an example of critical cooperation between epithelial and haematopoietic cell compartments to maintain tissue homeostasis.

Biography:

Philippe Jay (Inserm, Montpellier, France) and his team are interested in the physiopathology of the intestinal epithelium, including the biology of intestinal stem cells, signalling pathways that control maintenance of stem cells and their differentiation towards specialized cell types and the function of several differentiated intestinal epithelial cell subsets. The Jay’s group has worked extensively on the Sox9 transcription factor, showing that it is a target of the Wnt pathway and is required for the differentiation of the intestinal epithelial Paneth cells, which are involved in innate immunity. More recent work in this group led to the identification and characterisation of the tuft cell lineage in the intestinal epithelium, raising the number of differentiated cell types in this epithelium from five to six. The Jay team has developed extensive expertise in the generation and analysis of genetically engineered mouse models. In the context of very limited information about intestinal tuft cells, and absence of tools allowing tuft cell-specific Cre or reporter expression in mice, the Jay team strongly invested in the study of these cells by generating new technology to enable their functional analysis. This resulted in the recent identification of the first function of the intestinal tuft cells in initiating the immune response to helminth parasites, in a collaborative effort by the Jay, Maizels and Taylor teams.

All staff from organisations on the Research Park are welcome to attend.