Our main focus concerns the mechanisms underlying differentiation within the B cell lineage. We are currently focusing on two aspects of B cell development and differentiation.
1) A central interest in my lab concerns the differentiation of antibody-secreting plasma cells from naïve and memory B cells. We are primarily interested in the following questions: a) How long to plasma cells live and what signals regulate their survival? b) Do plasma cells located at sites other than the bone marrow, such as within the gut mucosa, utilize the same survival mechanisms as those in the marrow? c) To what extent does persisting antigen or chronic infection promote lasting antibody responses? d) What are the regulatory networks, transcriptional and otherwise, that underwrite the differentiation of an activated B cell into an antibody-secreting plasma cell?
In related work, we are focused on elucidating the influence of microbe-lymphocyte interactions in the gastrointestinal tract on systemic immunity, particularly the generation and maintenance of serum IgA responses.
2) The second main focus in my laboratory concerns how specific transcription factors promote the earliest phases of B cell development from multipotent progenitors.