The Role of Pcyox1L on Neutrophil Maturation and Survival

Abstract

The primary goal of this project was to investigate the role of Pcyox1L on neutrophil maturation and survivability. Pcyox1L is a newly discovered protein that currently has no known function in the literature. However, it has been shown to be differentially expressed in mouse neutrophils in response to infection and loss of microbiome signaling. In order to study the role of Pcyox1L on neutrophil maturation, we generated neutrophil progenitor cells, as well as mice with a Pycox1L knockout. We used flow cytometry to characterize the neutrophil phenotype of these Pycox1L knockout cells along with knockouts for two additional, differentially expressed proteins, SerpinB1a and Rheb, before characterizing the neutrophil phenotype of the Pcyox1L knockout mice. Our cell line results demonstrated that our protein knockouts drastically hinder neutrophil survivability and have accelerated maturation rates. Our data also identified a difference in maturation and Pcyox1L expression in the presence of Csf2rb cytokines such as GM- CSF and IL-3. Our results also demonstrated a dramatic difference in neutrophil response to peripheral infection in Pcyox1L knockout mice. This body of work demonstrates that Pcyox1L has roles in the lifespan of neutrophil cells and is deserving of further study.