> *Dissertation Defense Announcement:
> To:  The George Mason University Community*
>
> *Tony Pierson
> PhD Biosciences Candidate
> *
> *Date:   Thursday April 7, 2011
> Time:   11:30 a.m. 
> Place:  George Mason University
> ** 	     Bull Run Hall, Room 249
> 	     Prince William campus <http://www.gmu.edu/resources/visitors/findex.html>
>   
> Dissertation Chair: Dr. Monique van Hoek
> Committee members: Dr. Charles L. Bailey, Dr. Calvin Carpenter, Dr. Barney Bishop*
> *Title: "Specific and Innate Immunity Against Francisella"*
>
> The dissertation is on reserve in the Johnson Center Library, Fairfax campus.The doctoral project will not be read at the meeting, but should be read in advance. 
>   
>
> /**/All members of the George Mason University community are invited 
> to attend.
>
> /ABSTRACT:/
>
> /Francisella tularensis/ is a highly infectious gram negative 
> bacterium which causes tularemia.
>
> /Francisella/ produces outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), which release 
> many proteins into the extracellular proteome. We successfully 
> demonstrate that a novel /Francisella/ OMV vaccine delivered 
> intranasally protects BALB/C mice challenged with up to 100 LD50 of 
> intranasally delivered /Francisella/. Next we demonstrate that 
> mutations in the Tol/Pal system in /Francisella/ results in OMV 
> over-production. This finding may lead to a method of producing larger 
> amounts of OMVs for future vaccine production. Next, we measured 
> changes in transcription of  well characterized as well as novel human 
> ? defensin (hBD) genes upon exposure to /Francisella/. We observed 
> increased induction of transcription of hBDs when compared to the 
> negative control. To demonstrate translation, we used ELISA and found  
> that the amount of hBD protein in supernatant from each treatment 
> group was significantly higher than the negative control. We also 
> visualized hBD2 colocalized with /Francisella/. Together, these 
> finding demonstrate that hBDs are stimulated by and associated with 
> /Francisella/ bacteria as well as their OMVs. Finally, we showed that 
> hBDs stimulate the production of OMVs /in vitro/. Taken together, this 
> research establishes that OMVs stimulate the innate as well as 
> specific immunity in a manner similar to whole bacteria. However, OMVs 
> are acellular, and as such represent a novel vaccine candidate which 
> is capable of stimulating both innate and specific immunity.
>
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