Sensitive and quantitative cytokine detection in bats

Project Summary / AbstractBats have gained attention in recent years as reservoir or suspected reservoir hosts of many high-impact humanpathogenic viruses that cause outbreaks and epidemics with high case-fatality rates. Genome and transcriptomeanalyses suggest the immune systems of bats are substantially similar to those of other mammals. Howeverdifferences in the overall immunological response to viral exposure exist-allowing for bats to remain resistantviral reservoirs, while other mammals are highly susceptible. Due to the dearth of available antibody reagents tomonitor the abundance of cytokines during infection, little research into their immune systems and responseshas been conducted. Gene expression analyses can provide some indication of cytokine levels, howeverquantitation of immune proteins at multiple time-points during infection, in conjunction with end-point RNAanalysis, would be ideal. The lack of available bat antibody reagents poses a unique challenge in fullycharacterizing the immune response to infectious agents in this animal model. To overcome this hurdle, we aimto generate highly sensitive and specific targeted mass spectrometry assays to detect and quantify immuneproteins in complex matrices, such as biological fluids and tissue homogenates, from naïve bats and thoseinfected with virus.