• Less antibody diversity as we age

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Monday, March 28, 2022 22:30:40
    Less antibody diversity as we age
    Studies in African killifish reveal how the immune system ages

    Date:
    March 28, 2022
    Source:
    Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing
    Summary:
    As we age, our immune system works less well. We become more
    susceptible to infections and vaccinations no longer work as
    effectively. A research team has investigated whether short-lived
    killifish also undergo aging of the immune system. Indeed, they
    found that as early as four months of age, killifish have less
    diverse circulating antibodies compared to younger fish, which
    may contribute to a generalized decrease in the immune function.



    FULL STORY ==========================================================================
    As we age, our immune system works less well. We become more susceptible
    to infections and vaccinations no longer work as effectively. A research
    team led by Dario Riccardo Valenzano investigated whether short-lived
    killifish also undergo aging of the immune system. Indeed, they found that
    as early as four months of age, killifish have less diverse circulating antibodies compared to younger fish, which may contribute to a generalized decrease in the immune function.


    ==========================================================================
    The immune system must constantly respond to new attacks from pathogens
    and remember them in order to be protected during the next infection. For
    this purpose, B cells build an information repository and produce a
    variety of antibodies that can directly recognize the pathogens.

    "We wanted to know about the antibody repertoire in old age," explains
    Dario Riccardo Valenzano, who led the study. "It is difficult to
    study a human being's immune system over his or her entire life,
    because humans live a very long time. Moreover, in humans you can only
    study the antibodies in peripheral blood, as it is problematic to get
    samples from other tissues. For this reason, we used the killifish. It
    is very short-lived and we can get probes from different tissues."
    Killifishes are the shortest-lived vertebrates that can be kept in the laboratory. They live for only three to four months, age in a time-lapse
    and have become the focus of ageing research in recent years due to
    these characteristics.

    Less antibody diversity The researchers were able to characterize with
    high accuracy all the antibodies that killifish produce. They found that
    older killifish have different types of antibodies in their blood than
    younger fish. They also had a lower diversity of antibodies throughout
    their bodies.

    "If we have fewer different antibodies as we age, this could lead to
    a reduced ability to respond to infections. We now want to further
    investigate why the B cells lose their ability to produce diverse
    antibodies and whether they can possibly be rejuvenated in the killifish
    and thus regain this ability," says Valenzano.

    The research for this study was conducted at the Max Planck Institute
    for Biology of Ageing and was funded by the CECAD Cluster of Excellence
    for Aging Research and the Collaborative Research Center 1310 at the
    University of Cologne. Dario Riccardo Valenzano is now group leader of
    the research group "Evolutionary Biology / Microbiome-Host Interactions
    in Aging" at the Leibniz Institute on Aging -- Fritz Lipmann Institute
    (FLI) and Professor at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.


    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
    Max_Planck_Institute_for_Biology_of_Ageing. Note: Content may be edited
    for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. William John Bradshaw, Michael Poeschla, Aleksandra Placzek,
    Samuel Kean,
    Dario Riccardo Valenzano. Extensive age-dependent loss of antibody
    diversity in naturally short-lived turquoise killifish. eLife,
    2022; 11 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.65117 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220328092103.htm

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