Toll-like receptor signaling in the innate immune system of zebrafish larvae

In this thesis I studied the functions of the zebrafish orthologs of the human TLR5 and TLR2 genes that were shown to be responsible for recognition of bacterial flagellin and a broad spectrum of bacterial cell wall components, respectively. One of the focal points of this thesis is the difference at the transcriptomic level of the downstream pathway of the TLR5 and TLR2 receptors and the roles of TLR signaling in host innate immune responses to infection by Mycobacterium marinum, a close relative to Mycobacterium tuberculosis and a natural pathogen of zebrafish. The new possibilities for analysis of transcriptomes using RNA deep sequencing make it highly attractive to analyze the responses of an entire test animal model at the system biology level. Furthermore, we used genetic knockdown and knockout tools to further analyze the function of TLR5 and TLR2 and downstream signaling partners in innate immunity, infectious disease and insulin resistance. CSC scholarshipAnimal science