Welcome to the Boothby Lab
Central themes of Dr. Boothby’s laboratory:
- Elucidate components of the information relay from cell surface receptors to components of signal transduction, and regulators of gene transcription
- Develop insights into how these processes affect inflammation, lymphocyte differentiation, pathological processes and normal adaptive immunity.
Lymphocyte Function/ Humoral Immunity
We have focused on helper T cell function and, more recently, metabolism for B cells in humoral immunity and allergic lung inflammation models. An integral concept of our research has been that deep basic understanding of signal integration and requirements for a particular aspect of functional regulation prove essential to advancing therapeutic goals in humans.
Understanding the distribution of nutrients in an immune micro-environment
We leveraged existing techniques of intra-vital imaging to discover zones of functional hypoxia in normal secondary lymphoid organs, especially after immunization akin to vaccination.
In this benchmark paper, we assembled evidence of a mechanism connecting the hypoxia to regulation of the qualities of antibodies produced in response to the vaccination.
Ongoing work is deepening our understanding of the molecular mechanisms and implications of this discovery.
Analyses of specific pathways of nutrient uptake and utilization
Intermediary metabolism and its products have been tied to immune regulation and function, but B-cell physiology and the progress to antibody secreting cell differentiation are relatively understudied. Active work in the Boothby lab has identified evidence of a novel synergism between two pathways that we have termed "Synthetic Auxotrophy," in which two perturbations when combined dramatically undermine antibody responses.
