Research

The Lane lab focuses on cellular dynamics during bacterial infection. Infections are incredibly heterogeneous but also incredibly dynamic. To identify the molecular mechanisms that regulate cell-to-cell variation during infection, we need to profile individual cells AND capture the decisions made by both host and pathogen throughout infection. Live-cell microscopy and fluorescent reporters are an ideal tool to track cell decision-making and this approach will enable us to determine how cellular dynamics regulate host and pathogen cell fate during infection.

In the lab we primarily work on Salmonella typhimurium and its interactions with its two primary host cell types, macrophages and epithelial cells. Our goal is to gain a quantitative understanding of how individual bacteria and host cells measure, process, and respond to environmental stimuli during infection. We expect our approach of applying dynamic single-cell technologies to the study of infection will allow us to uncover general principles about how cells make decisions during infection.

Some of the questions that motivate work in the lab include:

• How does a pathogen adapt to the environment of the phagosome, and what regulates heterogeneity in bacterial cell responses inside the macrophage?

• How do the actions of the pathogen influence the host cell and vice versa? Can either side sense the actions of the other and dynamically rewire their response?

We use microfluidic devices, such as the dual-input mother machine, to investigate how bacteria respond to fluctuating environmental conditions. This approach allows us to capture temporal dynamics of bacterial gene expression and link it to cell fate.

We use reporters for both macrophage signaling responses (NF-κB, MAPK etc) and bacterial gene expression to trace single-cell responses during infection. This allows us to examine in real-time the extent to which host cell responses are manipulated by the pathogen.