Cathy Leonard

LIH Luxembourg Institute of Health | CRP Santé · Department of Infection and Immunity

Prevalence and incidence of IgE-mediated allergic diseases have increased over the past years in developed and developing countries. Allergen-specific immunotherapy (AIT) is currently the only curative treatment available for allergic diseases that has long-term efficacy. Although AIT has been proven successful as an immunomodulatory therapy since...

Background The prevalence of allergy to cat is expanding worldwide. Allergen‐specific immunotherapy (AIT) has advantages over symptomatic pharmacotherapy and promises long lasting disease control in allergic patients. However, there is still a need to improve cat AIT regarding efficacy, safety and adherence to the treatment. Here we aim to boost im...

In Europe and the USA, at least one person in four is exposed every day to inhalant allergens of mammalian origin, a considerable number is regularly exposed for professional reasons and almost everyone is occasionally exposed to inhalant allergens from pets or domestic animals. The production of IgE to these inhalant allergens, often complicated b...

This paper describes a novel approach, based on suicide transposition, to addressing the question of whether IS231A can give rise to cointegrate molecules through replicative transposition, even at a very low frequency. Comparative analysis was carried out with IS 10, another member of the same IS4 family. The results indicate that transposition of...

The education or licensing process is essentially required for the proper anti-tumor function of natural killer (NK) cells. Although several models for education have been proposed, the genetic factors regulating these processes still remain largely elusive. Here we show that FAM13A (family with sequence similarity 13, member A), strongly linked to...

Pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) is the gatekeeper enzyme of the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. Here we show that the deglycase DJ-1 (encoded by PARK7, a key familial Parkinson’s disease gene) is a pacemaker regulating PDH activity in CD4⁺ regulatory T cells (Treg cells). DJ-1 binds to PDHE1-β (PDHB), inhibiting phosphorylation of PDHE1-α (PDHA), thus...

Decline in immune function during aging increases susceptibility to different aging-related diseases. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms, especially the genetic factors contributing to imbalance of naïve/memory T-cell subpopulations, still remain largely elusive. Here, we show that loss of DJ-1 encoded by PARK7/DJ-1, causing early-onset f...

Decline in immune function during aging increases susceptibility to different aging related diseases. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms, especially the genetic factors contributing to imbalance of naïve/memory T-cell subpopulations, still remain largely elusive. Here we show that loss of DJ-1 encoded by PARK7/DJ-1, causing early-onset fa...

Pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) is the gatekeeper enzyme into the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. Here we show that PARK7/DJ-1, a key familial Parkinsons , disease (PD) gene, is a pacemaker controlling PDH activity in CD4 regulatory T cells (Tregs). DJ-1 bound to PDH-E1 beta (PDHB), inhibiting the phosphorylation of PDH-E1 alpha (PDHA), thus promoting...

We provide here an overview of our present understanding of the distribution of different insertion sequences (ISs) within bacterial genomes (both chromosomes and plasmids). This is at present fragmentary and a significant effort is needed in the analysis of the increasing number of genomes whose sequence has been determined. We also consider some...

Recent dissection of numerous plasmids and transposable elements has given more credence to the modular organization of these genetic and genomic entities. Although many variations on each theme exist, the number of basic functional cassettes is thought to be relatively limited. In this paper, a novel type of mobile cassette is described. A natural...

The genome structure of Bacillus cereus is relatively complex, its DNA being modulated between a size-varying chromosome and large plasmids. To study the genetic organization of the B. cereus type strain ATCC 14579, thermosensitive transposition vectors were designed on the basis of IS231A-derived cassettes containing uncommon restriction sites. A...

Bacillus cereus, Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus mycoides are very closely related bacteria, generally considered as subspecies of B. cereus sensu lato. Different transposable elements have been isolated from B. thuringiensis, including IS231, IS232 and IS240 and their variants. The distribution of these three insertion sequences (IS) within th...

Two cold shock genes, cspL and cspP, have been cloned from two Lactobacillus plantarum strains. These genes, which are nonallelic, were present in all strains tested. The genes encode 66-amino-acid polypeptides related to each other and to the cold shock Csp family. Transcription of cspP rendered a single mRNA, while two cspL mRNAs were found with...

Electrophoretic separation of macrorestriction fragments containing a particular genomic interval has until recently depended on fortuitously placed native rare restriction sites. We present new IS10-based transposons carrying the yeast intron-encoded I-SceI restriction site which is absent from most prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. Construction...