Clayton Cressler
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Ecology & Evolution
Why do some infections clear quickly while others linger for months? Infection length matters because it sets how long a host is sick and how long it can spread the infection.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Microbiology & Immunology
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
infection duration
chronic infection
helminths
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Test whether positive feedback loops between immune cells and parasitic worms, and among immune cells, create tipping points that send an infection toward rapid clearance or chronic infection.
- Determine how infectious dose and host genetics shift infection duration, using mouse strains that differ in how infection length changes with increasing doses of a parasitic helminth.
- Combine mechanistic mathematical models with immunological experiments run both in the lab and outdoors to measure how a natural environment changes the strength of immune feedbacks and infection duration.
More about the research
Duration varies widely. It can depend on the host's genes, its environment, and even how many parasites start the infection. This collaborative project studies that variation in mice infected with parasitic worms, called helminths. The aim is to understand what makes worm infections acute or chronic and to develop methods that could apply to other infections.
Why it matters
Infections that become chronic keep hosts sick longer and extend the time they can transmit disease. Explaining why parasitic worm infections clear in some hosts but persist in others could clarify what drives varied infection burden in natural populations. The methods for detecting tipping points could also help researchers study chronic infections of other types.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Elia D Tait Wojno
University of Washington, WA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test how Notch signaling inside basophils controls where they sit in the large intestine and how they contact CD4+ T cells during Trichuris muris worm infection, including a role for alpha4 integrin.
Makedonka Mitreva
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Track the reproducing adult female Wuchereria bancrofti worms over time by reconstructing sibling relationships among larvae (microfilariae) from repeated blood samples, using whole-genome sequencing of single larvae.
Brian Codding
University of Utah, UT·Ecology & Evolution
Quantify long-term Indigenous socio-environmental dynamics in the Bear River Basin by combining traditional knowledge, archaeology, paleoecology, historical ecology and community ecology.
The school
University of Nebraska-Lincoln: 17 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 261 research doctorates a year.
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