Renee Tsolis, PhD

Research Interests: The Tsolis lab utilizes intracellular bacteria, particularly Salmonella, Brucella, and more recently Chlamydia, to study functioning of the host innate immune system as well as how microbial communities at mucosal surfaces protect against infection.

One question the lab has been addressing is how host phagocytes detect subversion of their physiology by injected virulence factors of intracellular pathogens, which led to discovery of a new function for NOD1 and NOD2 in sensing endoplasmic reticulum stress induced by Chlamydia and Brucella.

The lab’s work on Salmonella has advanced our understanding of how underlying comorbidities prevalent in the developing world, such as malaria and malnutrition, compromise phagocyte functions required for containment of infection to the gastrointestinal tract, thereby increasing susceptibility to disseminated infection. Most recently the lab has focused on animal modeling to generate a model to study typhoid fever, an infection that is strictly restricted to humans.