The SBME is excited to host Yale Associate Professor, Dr. Kathryn Miller-Jensen’s Seminar:
Single-cell analysis of macrophage heterogeneity
Where: Michael Smith Laboratories | Room 102
When: March 12, 2020 @2:00pm
Abstract:
Macrophages are innate immune cells that contribute to fighting infections, tissue repair, and maintaining tissue homeostasis. We are exploring how regulation of macrophage heterogeneity may enable functional diversity. In one study, using single-cell analysis of macrophage secretion, we discovered that the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 is secreted by a subset of macrophages even at low LPS doses. This appears to enforce a threshold for macrophage pro-inflammatory activation that strongly contributes to intercellular heterogeneity. In another study of macrophages co-stimulated with LPS+IFNy and the resolving cytokine IL-4, we using single-cell RNA sequencing and found that variable negative cross-regulation between a subset of LPS+IFN-y- and IL-4-specific gene programs resulted in significant heterogeneity. Our results suggest that increasing functional diversity in the population is one strategy macrophages use to respond to conflicting environmental cues.
Speaker:
Dr. Kathryn Miller-Jensen
Associate Professor, Yale
Dr. Miller-Jensen is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Yale. Before joining the faculty, she was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley in the Schaffer laboratory.
She worked previously at the National Academies, Merck Pharmaceuticals, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Monitor Group. She received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at MIT with Doug Lauffenburger and her B.E. & B.A. degrees at Dartmouth College.
