The aim of this study was to identify dendritic cells in the chicken through the development of a set of markers and probes to potential dendritic cell markers in the chicken. In the absence of markers to avian dendritic cell markers published sequence databases were used to identify three candidate markers that showed significant homologies to CD83, fascin and DEC205 all potential dendritic cell markers in humans and mice. These markers were chosen for the following reasons: CD83 is currently the best marker of mature human and murine dendritic cells; fascin-1 is an actin bundling protein highly conserved between species, with expression restricted in leukocytes to dendritic cells; and DEC205 is a C-type lectin whose expression is also restricted to dendritic cells. CD83 was expressed in immunologically relevant tissues, had low levels of expression in the bursa and was not detectable on endothelial cell types. Based upon these distributions, CD83 was selected as the most suitable marker of dendritic cells in the chicken and an anti-chicken CD83 polyclonal serum and monoclonal antibodies were used to assess the expression of CD83 at the protein level. A map of CD83 expression was created using immunohistochemistry techniques upon a variety of tissues including spleen thymus and bursa derived from out-bred chickens and specific pathogen free chickens. This data revealed that whilst some aspects of CD83 immunobiology were conserved such as the upregulation of CD83 expression under inflammatory conditions, the distribution of CD83<sup>+</sup> cells was uniquely distributed amongst the B cell areas of the chicken immune system in contrast to the T cell associated distribution of humans and mice. The expression of CD83 by specific cellular lineages was determined using commercially available lineage specific monoclonal antibodies and two-colour fluorescent microscopy. This established a dendritic cell type with features that are unique to the chicken.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:603659 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Hansell, C. A. H. |
| Publisher | University of Cambridge |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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