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Lena Pernas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned her B.Sc. in Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics from UCLA in 2008 and her Ph.D. in Microbiology & Immunology from Stanford University in 2013. Pernas completed postdoctoral training as an LSRF-Simons Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Padua from 2014 to 2018. She previously served as a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany, from 2019 until her return to UCLA in 2023, where she also holds the position of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar.
Pernas leads research on the metabolism of infection, focusing on how mitochondria and other organelles compete with microbes such as Toxoplasma gondii for nutrients and actively participate in host defense. Her laboratory investigates organelle sensing of pathogens, metabolic rewiring during infection, and related cellular responses. She has received the 2024 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and the 2024 Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease award. Pernas delivered a TEDx talk on mitochondria in defense against microbes. Her professional email address is lfpernas@mednet.ucla.edu.
UCLA researchers uncover how mitochondria shed outer membranes to form novel organelles during infection, shedding light on eukaryotic cell evolution and potential therapies.
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