Laboratory of Intercellular Communication

Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences

EV projects leader: Gabriela Ambrožová
website: https://dbis.ibp.cz/
email: ambrozova@ibp.cz

The role of bacteria-derived extracellular vesicles (bEVs) in chronic inflammatory bowel diseases

Chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, characterized by uncontrolled activation of intestinal immune cells in a genetically susceptible host, are undoubtedly one of the key pathologies affecting modern society. Both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria from the gut microbiota release EVs, whereas their role as a messenger delivering the information from the maternal bacterial cell to the host cell has been revealed recently and is also considered in the context of intestinal inflammation. bEVs origin, composition and proper mechanism of action remain unexplored, particularly in gram-positive bEVs.

The main goal of our project is to characterize the composition and functional properties of gram-positive bEVs and to reveal their role on the cells of intestinal epithelium as well as on myeloid cells participating in intestinal inflammation initiation and development. The anaerobic cultivation in the anaerobic chamber is the crucial initial step for properly manipulating gastrointestinal bacterial cultures, followed by bEVs isolation, purification and characterization. Modern microbiological, molecular, biophysical and biochemical methods including flow cytometry, advanced microscopy, and functional and metabolic assays combined with bioinformatics approaches are used within the project. Moreover, DSS-induced colitis in vivo model is used in a state-of-the-art animal facility localized at IBP CAS.