MELBOURNE, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Australian and U.S. researchers are teaming up to decode how genetics governs immune cell "fate timers," revealing why some people inherit complex immune diseases from healthy parents.
By combining immune and genetic data, scientists from Australia's Snow Center for Immune Health and Northeastern University in the United States will seek to uncover how genes influence immune health, a media release of Australia's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) said late Thursday.
Researchers will work to scale the Snow Center's Cyton2 cell timer model with genetic data to predict disorder risks at the population level, according to the center, jointly led by WEHI and Australia's Royal Melbourne Hospital.
The model reveals how individual immune cells make critical decisions, offering new insights into the immune system's inner workings, the release said.
It said researchers have united science and mathematics to explore how immune B and T cells are modified as they divide and multiply, work that has helped reshape how immune behavior is studied.
The findings suggest that immune disorders may be inherited and result from a combination of many small effects that on their own are harmless.
The new project will combine immune data with genetic sequencing to reveal how genetic variation shapes immune cell behavior and why some people are born with immune disorders or a higher risk of them, the release said.
"This collaboration represents an exciting step toward transforming how we understand, diagnose, and ultimately prevent immune disease," said Professor Phil Hodgkin, scientific program lead at the Snow Center. ■
