Genetic diversity impacts how our immune system reacts to different pathogens

Monocytes are an essential part of our innate immune system and are of central importance in the defense against pathogens. These immune cells recognize pathogens based on pathogen-specific surface molecules. In addition, In addition, even the slightest genetic differences in our genome may explain why the immune response to the same infectious agent varies from person to person.

In the present study, Antje Häder, PhD student in the group Fungal Septomics, and cooperation partners from the Microbiome Dynamics department (Leibniz-HKI), the University of Bonn and the former Septomics junior research group Host Fungal Interfaces analyzed the reaction patterns of isolated human monocytes from a total of 215 healthy volunteers to characterize the genetic regulation of the innate immune response to different pathogens. The immune cells were stimulated with three different pathogens - the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, the Gram-negative bacterium Neisseria meningitidis and the Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus.

If you want to learn more about the results of the study, please read here.

The work has now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Original publication

Häder, A., Schäuble, S., Gehlen, J. et al. Pathogen-specific innate immune response patterns are distinctly affected by genetic diversity. Nature Communications 14, 3239 (2023). Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38994-5