How maternal immune systems evolved to support the placenta

About the project

About the Project A 2027 Crick PhD project with Margarida Cardoso Moreira. Project background and description How can the immune system evolve to accept a genetically mismatched tissue? That is the challenge posed by the evolution of the placenta. The placenta allows mothers to provide nutrients directly to their developing embryos and, to function, requires extensive interactions between maternal and (genetically mismatched) embryonic tissues. Across different mammals, maternal immune systems have evolved a variety of solutions to address the immunological challenges of pregnancy, and a diversity of immune tolerance mechanisms has emerged. But mammals are not the only species that reproduce through a placenta. Placentas are also found in some lizards, snakes, amphibians, and fish, and all of these species must address the immunological challenge posed by the placenta. In our group, we study pregnancy in mammals and in a unique natural system: a fish family (Poeciliidae) with multiple independent origins of a placenta. In this project, you'll use single-cell technologies to map the reproductive immune system across these systems, revealing how tolerance to a genetically mismatched tissue is built — and how evolution has solved the same problem in different or similar ways. Candidate background Much of the work involves analysing large single-cell datasets, so we're looking for someone excited to work computationally with large-scale genomic data. Lab-specific question Tell us about a scientific paper you have read and really enjoyed. Please choose a paper from outside our lab, as we are curious about your your own scientific interests. What makes it stand out to you? Then imagine you could pick up where that paper left off: what is the next question you would want to answer, and why do you think it matters?

Research areas