The Daugherty lab in the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD uses comparative genomics, biochemistry and virology to understand how host immunity genes evolve to defend against pathogens and how pathogens counter-evolve to defeat host immunity.
Daugherty Lab @ UCSD
News:
December 2024: Liz’s paper on evolution and function of RIPK proteins in vertebrates is now published in eLife! RIPKs are a fascinating family of proteins involved in a number of processes, most notably programmed cell death and immune activation following infection by RIPK1 and RIPK3. Liz did a deep dive on the evolution of these proteins and their interacting partners across many vertebrate lineages. Using those evolutionary insights, she also identified a number of conserved and divergent functions of RIPK1 and RIPK3 in a range of species, which shows these pathways are clearly adapting in distinct lineages in response to pressure from pathogens. Congrats Liz!
June 2024: Clara Young joins the lab as a new PhD student! Welcome to the lab Clara!
March 2024: Isabel is awarded an NSF GRFP for her fantastic science and extensive outreach efforts! Write-up is here. Congratulations Isabel!
December 2023: New HGT paper published in EMBO J! This was another HGT discovery from Chinmay’s work with experimental work done by Dengke Ma’s lab at UCSF. Bacteria, plants, and fungi use a sugar called L-rhamnose for biosynthesis of their rigid cell walls, but within animals, only nematodes seem to have the genes for its biosynthesis. As Chinmay discovered, this is because nematodes stole a critical gene (rml-3 in C. elegans) for rhamnose biosynthesis from bacteria. Dengke’s lab showed that this gene is important for cuticle development, which is the nematode’s hardened exoskeleton, and allows the nematodes to resist environmental stress. Congrats Chinmay and thanks for another great collaboration Dengke!
