Lamason Lab
Principal Investigator: Rebecca L Lamason
Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
Primary Subfield: Immunology
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Multicellular organisms use intercellular communication to coordinate cell function and maintain tissue homeostasis. Recent work suggests that this communication is driven in part by the exchange of organelles (via trans-endocytosis) and mechanical cues directly across cell-cell junctions. Dysregulation of this communication leads to cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Despite its importance, we lack a fundamental molecular understanding of how intercellular communication occurs because of the limited number of cell biological tools capable of probing the molecular mechanisms at cell-cell contacts. This proposal seeks to elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of the pathways thought to control intercellular communication by studying how they are manipulated when under microbial control. The bacterium Listeria monocytogenes disseminates through human tissues using a process called cell-to-cell spread, which is a vesicular-mediated form of intercellular exchange that mimics host trans-endocytosis. Listeria spreads from cell to cell by mobilizing the host’s actin cytoskeleton for intracellular motility and transport to the cell-cell junction. Once at the junction…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R01AI155489-06: Mechanisms of SFG Rickettsia-Host Interactions (2026)
- 1R35GM164217-01: Microbial Manipulation Of Eukaryotic Membranes (2026)
- 5R01GM141025-04: Microbial Control of Host Intercellular Communication (2025)
- 2R01AI155489-05A1: Mechanisms of SFG Rickettsia-Host Interactions (2025)
- 5R01AI155489-04: Mechanisms of SFG Rickettsia-Host Interactions (2024)
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