Gaidt Lab

Research focus

ERC Starting Grant · 2023

Guard-driven immunity against pathogens

Successful pathogens use virulence factors to inhibit immune defenses. To counteract this, host guard proteins monitor the integrity of pathways (‘guardees’) that are attacked by virulence factors, such that inhibition of the guardee activates guard-driven immunity. Instead of directly detecting microbial components like canonical innate immune (pattern recognition) receptors, guards are activated by sensing the activity of virulent microbes. While guard-immunity is common in plants, only a few mammalian guard-pathways are known and mammals are thought to heavily rely on pattern recognition to detect pathogens. We have recently described the MORC3-MRE pathway, the first mammalian…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.