Using in situ structural biology to resolve immune cell interactions at the nanoscale

About the Project

The immune system's ability to eliminate infected or cancerous cells depends on precisely orchestrated cell-cell interactions. Defining these interactions at the molecular level is fundamental to understand the immune response and to drive development of the next generation of immunotherapies.

In this scholarship, you will employ cutting-edge structural cell biology methods to visualize nanoscale changes which control the immune response. You will establish time-resolved fluorescence microscopy of immune cell interactions using immunofluorescence and live-cell imaging. By performing cryo-correlative light, electron microscopy combined with computational analysis, you will gain high resolution structural information of the cytoskeleton and associated components in their native cellular environment. In parallel, you will generate genetic perturbations of known cytoskeletal crosslinkers which have an enigmatic role in immune cells and characterise their effect on cell behaviour.

Together, this will explain what drives the generation of proper immune responses and open new avenues for modulating immune activation, which could help in treatment of autoimmune conditions and in development of immune-guided cancer therapies.

During this project you will receive comprehensive training in: Flow cytometric analysis and co-culture of immune cells and their targets; High-resolution fluorescence microscopy and live cell imaging; Cryo-electron tomography and cryo-correlative light and electron microscopy; Computational workflows for analysis of biomolecules in situ.