From Plant Protection to Human Protection: Trained Immunity

Trained Immunity

The Lindermayr Lab aims to understand the molecular pathways involved in human trained immunity - based on the expertise on the plant innate immune system.

Click & View

Green leaves shaped in human lungs. Conceptual image

The innate immune system is an evolutionarily conserved general defense strategy of almost all higher organisms, including plants and animals. This defense mechanism is inscribed in their genes and allows them to recognize and defend against attackers. Moreover, invertebrates have evolved an additional, adaptive immune system based on antibody production.

In the past, we focused our research on the plant defense system. Pathogen recognition induces the activation of signaling pathways that include metabolic changes, phosphorylation reactions, the production of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species and finally results in defense response. Moreover, plants have developed a priming system, whereby they memorize previous infections and can respond more robustly to subsequent pathogen challenges. There is already clear evidence that epigenetic mechanisms, like DNA methylation and histone modifications, directly participate in plant immune memory.

Although the plant and animal innate immune system has developed independently both recognize an overlapping set of conserved microbe-associated molecular patterns and use similar mechanisms for induction of defense response. Interestingly, the animal innate immune system has also a memory mechanism, which has been termed “trained immunity”. Especially, organs exposed to the outside world, such as the lung, are in constant and direct contact to immune training-inducing stimuli (e.g. particles and microbes). Based on our expertise on the plant innate immune system we aim to understand the molecular pathways involved in human trained immunity.

Special focus is on the signaling function of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS/NO) in innate immunity and how these molecules regulate metabolic and epigenetic reprogramming during the training phase. Moreover, we investigate how atmospheric gases (ozone, NOx, volatile organic compounds) and climate change-related conditions (heat) affect the innate immune response. Overall, the detailed understanding of the mechanisms of trained immunity might allow us to develop immunotherapies to promote trained immunity on one side and to treat excessive or defective trained immunity on the other side.