Natural Sciences Colloquium - Jianying Yang, Mei Li: Towards in vivo visualizing the dynamics of cytokine-targeting cells

Towards in vivo visualizing the dynamics of cytokine-targeting cells

Cytokines are endogenously produced mediators playing a central role in the initiation and regulation of the immune response of the organisms. Upon secretion, a cytokine targets the cell surface receptor complex in a given cell type, and converts the extracellular cues to trigger intracellular signaling networks. This further leads to the production of other molecular mediators that act on other cells, thereby triggering and regulating immune responses. However, it has remained challenging to elucidate the dynamic cellular networks downstream of cytokine signaling in vivo.

In this FRIAS-USIAS project we are joining the forth in cytokine functional study using mouse modeling systems (Strasbourg) and in synthetic biology toolkit for receptor signaling study (Freiburg), aiming at developing innovative methodologies to pinpoint cytokine-targeting cells and visualize their dynamics in animal tissue microenvironment.