Emily Mace
Columbia University, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
How does an immune cell find its way through the body, and how is it built in the first place? Natural killer (NK) cells are white blood cells that destroy virus-infected and cancerous cells.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Genetics
- Topics
natural killer cells
NK cells
innate lymphoid cells
- Grants
- 4 known grants, through May 2031
What they work on
- Define how CD56/NCAM, a surface adhesion protein shared with nerve cells, works with integrins, the actin cytoskeleton and other receptors to control spontaneous migration of human NK cells, using manipulation of human lymphocytes and advanced imaging.
- Determine how intrinsic and extrinsic signals, including adhesion, actomyosin contraction and energy use, regulate amoeboid migration and the motile scanning that human NK cells acquire as they mature, using imaging and image analysis.
- Define the conserved and unique functions and architecture of septins, scaffold-forming proteins, during three-dimensional migration of human immune cells and nematode worm cells in confined, complex environments.
- Develop specialized light microscopy and computational analysis approaches to watch single cells move within dense tissues and tight spaces, and generate best practices for teaching these multidisciplinary methods to learners.
- Test whether NK cells differ from T cells in controlling cell cycle entry and replisome protein expression, using biochemical, single-molecule imaging and genetic/epigenetic approaches in lymphoid progenitors, mature cells and blood stem cells.
- Identify lineage-specific sensors that decide survival versus apoptosis under mild replication stress, and manipulate the apoptotic pathway to test rescue of NK deficiency caused by replisome gene variants such as MCM4, MCM10, GINS1 and GINS4.
- Optimize a genetic barcoding system in human pluripotent stem cells and use it to map the transcriptomic trajectories of NK cells arising from lymphoid versus myeloid committed progenitors at single-cell resolution.
- Pair the barcode reporter system with live-cell imaging to follow the dynamic cell interactions that give rise to mature human NK cells as they differentiate from multipotent progenitors.
More about the research
They patrol by crawling through crowded tissues, and in adults they are made continuously from blood stem cells. When their development fails, people become seriously ill. This research asks three linked questions about human NK cells and related lymphocytes (the white blood cells that include NK and T cells): how they are generated from stem cells, how they move, and why they are unusually vulnerable to problems in copying their DNA. The projects combine human cell biology, stem cell differentiation, the genetics of inherited immune disease, and advanced microscopy and image analysis.
Why it matters
NK cells help control viral infections and cancer, and people who inherit faulty DNA-replication genes such as MCM4 or GINS1 can lack working NK cells. Explaining why these variants strike NK cells could clarify the cause of these immune deficiencies. NK cell–based therapies are becoming important tools for treating cancer, so identifying weak points in NK cell growth and development could help researchers overcome barriers to producing these cells in the lab. The migration studies add basic understanding of how patrolling lymphocytes move through tissues.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Cellular and molecular determinants of human lymphocyte migration
NIH · Aug 2026 – May 2031
Differential regulation of cell cycle entry and apoptosis in cytolytic lymphocytes informed by primary immunodeficiency
NIH · Aug 2025 – Jul 2030
Cytoskeletal regulation of single cell migration in complex environments
NSF · Sep 2025 – Aug 2028
Closest labs
Teresa V Bowman
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Genetics
Test whether DDX41 insufficiency cooperates with age-associated activity of cGAS, an inflammation-triggering DNA sensor, to impair blood stem and progenitor cells in germline ddx41 heterozygous zebrafish that develop MDS-like disease.
Wayne Yokoyama
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Identify the effector mechanisms by which NK cells constrain immune checkpoint therapy in mouse tumor models, using NK cell depletion, NK-deficient mice and transfer of NK cells into tumors.
Alison Patteson
Syracuse University, NY·Biophysics·Early-career
Determine how vimentin intermediate filaments control the shape and deformability of the nucleus as cells squeeze through confined 3D spaces.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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