Mortality from infectious diseases remains a leading cause of death worldwide, making the development of new vaccines an important priority of biomedical research. Immunologic memory is a cardinal feature of adaptive immunity and an important goal of vaccination strategies. Traditional vaccination strategies are very effective at generating neutralizing antibodies against bacteria and viruses. However, a vaccine capable of generating robust T lymphocyte memory is still beyond our research, due, in part, to an incomplete understanding of the molecular basis of lymphocyte fate specification. In this proposal, we will develop single-cell approaches to study specification of lymphocyte fates in response to microbial infection.
T lymphocytes are cells of the immune system that provide protection against infections. Our goal is to understand how these cells are generated and how they function in response to different infections. These studies may help our efforts to improve vaccines.
| Widjaja, Christella E; Olvera, Jocelyn G; Metz, Patrick J et al. (2017) Proteasome activity regulates CD8+ T lymphocyte metabolism and fate specification. J Clin Invest 127:3609-3623 |
| Song, Yan; Botvinnik, Olga B; Lovci, Michael T et al. (2017) Single-Cell Alternative Splicing Analysis with Expedition Reveals Splicing Dynamics during Neuron Differentiation. Mol Cell 67:148-161.e5 |
