Markus Bosmann
Boston University, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
Macrophages are immune cells that engulf and destroy invading bacteria, and they are the body's first line of defense in the lungs, the gut, and other tissues. When they fail, infections can turn deadly or the immune response can damage the body's own tissue.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
- Topics
macrophages
innate immunity
Legionella pneumophila
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Feb 2030
What they work on
- Test whether the signaling protein GNB2 protects against Legionella pneumonia by deleting it in mouse myeloid cells and alveolar macrophages, then profiling lung immune cells with CITE-Seq and Visium HD spatial transcriptomics.
- Determine whether GNB2 controls Legionella growth through NLRP3 inflammasome-driven pyroptosis, a cell self-destruct program, using caspase and Gasdermin D assays, immunoprecipitation with mass spectrometry, and phosphoproteomics.
- Silence GNB2 in human cell-line, primary, and iPSC-derived macrophages infected with L. pneumophila to gauge infection risk for carriers of the GNB2 p.Arg52Leu mutation.
- Test whether the acid-activated chloride channel PACC1 is needed for macrophages to engulf and kill bacteria, using knockout mouse cells, pH-sensitive BioParticles, RNA-Seq, and shRNA silencing in human THP-1 macrophages.
- Determine how myeloid-specific PACC1 loss or overexpression changes outcomes in E. coli sepsis and pneumococcal pneumonia, using conditional knockout mice, CITE-Seq, and TurboID proximity labeling to find PACC1 partners.
- Determine how bacterial polyphosphates disrupt IL-27 and JAK1/STAT1 signaling in gut immune cells, using mice colonized with ppk-deficient E. coli and lab-grown phagocytes and T cells.
- Measure polyphosphate kinase (ppk) abundance in blood and stool metagenomics data from IBD patients, and test whether neutralizing polyphosphates eases T cell-transfer colitis in mice.
More about the research
This research asks which specific molecules inside macrophages and related immune cells decide whether bacteria are cleared or allowed to persist. It studies three settings: Legionella pneumonia, bacterial sepsis, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Across the projects, the lab combines genetically engineered mice, cultured human immune cells, single-cell and spatial 'omics' methods, and patient data.
Why it matters
Legionella pneumonia, sepsis, and inflammatory bowel disease kill or disable many people, and sepsis alone causes about 50 million cases a year worldwide. This work could point to new treatment targets. Examples include boosting PACC1-driven bacterial clearance or neutralizing bacterial polyphosphates in IBD. It may also help estimate Legionella risk for people carrying a GNB2 mutation, and it aims to find markers of how bacteria worsen gut inflammation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Egil Lien
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how loss of the splicing factors Raver1 or Ptbp1 changes RIPK1/caspase-8-driven cell death and inflammation, using knockout macrophages and other cell lines infected with Yersinia.
Daren Knoell
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how loss of the zinc transporter ZIP8 alters the makeup of myeloid immune cells in the lung in mice, and what that means for clearing Streptococcus pneumoniae and for survival.
Qingjie Li
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, TX·Physiology
Test whether transplanting a mouse's own banked youthful gut microbiome into mature adult mice delays physiological and molecular aging, combining heart, liver and cognitive function tests with organ transcriptomics and microbiome profiling.
The school
Boston University: 26 labs on PI Pages, $784M a year on research, 630 research doctorates a year.
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