Research Activities

Research in our laboratory is focused on how genetic variation and infection affect susceptibility to autoimmune disease. During the course of evolution, it might be assumed that alleles conferring susceptibility for autoimmune disease would undergo negative selection. Such alleles, however, are often found to be common in the human population based on recent genome-wide association studies. It is postulated that these seemingly deleterious alleles are maintained in the population because they provide resistance to infectious disease. Alternatively, the hygiene hypothesis suggests that certain infections may temper the immune system and decrease the risk for developing autoimmunity in genetically at-risk individuals. Testing these overlapping hypotheses in humans is difficult. Instead, our principal research strategy is to use different mouse models that are susceptible or resistant to infectious and autoimmune disease. A combination of genetic mapping, genomic profiling and cellular immunology is being used to identify candidate disease genes, as well as determine how certain alleles affect susceptibiliy and resistance to infectious and autoimmune diseases and whether certain types of infections can prevent autoimmune disease.

Research Keywords

Researching in the following areas: Animal models - Mice, Autoimmune disease, Genomics, Cellular immunology, Genetic mapping