Molecular mechanisms involved in education of the immune system and their impact on disease of economic significance

Increasing demands in the area of livestock industry are based on desire of safe food of good quality, thus it is of great significance to maintain healthy livestock populations in Norway. In the proposed project we will concentrate on the role of gut and gut-associated lymphoid tissue in a disease of major economic importance, the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, scrapie in sheep. The project will address the expression of genes in these tissues following exposure to scrapie agent. Novel experime ntal systems with isolation of gut loops will provide defined regions of the gut from which differential expression analysis will be performed. Results from the project will have wider implications for major food-borne and environmentally transmissible d iseases entering the host via the gut.