By DoM Communications | Date published: October 15, 2024
Pukkila-Worley Lab Publishes Companion Papers Examining Immune Response in C. elegans
Sparked by the question, “What regulates the immune response in C. elegans”, MD/PhD student Sammy Tse-Kang and Read Pukkila-Worley, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, embarked upon a series of intricately designed and carefully executed experiments that “uncovered a mechanism of effector-triggered immunity in animals, in which host cells detect infection by sensing the harmful effects of a pathogen rather than simply the presence of a dangerous microbe.” Their novel research “details the mechanism of an immune regulator whose role in pathogen sensing is conserved across all organisms.”
Their findings were published concurrently in Immunity and Cell Reports in September and featured on UMass Chan news.