Research Interests

Evolution of Immune Systems

Research Area

The research my lab is centered on understanding the evolution of immune systems with a special focus on two questions: 1) How did adaptive immunity evolve as a booster pack to the existing common innate immune defenses? 2) What are the trajectories along which the metazoan immune cell lineages evolved? Strongylocentrotus purpuratus is our main work horse (non-)model organism to address these questions, but we are happily diversifying our lab zoo to the protostome universe when needed. The central hallmarks of vertebrate adaptive immunity are the enzymatic machineries that facilitate somatic gene editing to generate diversified repertoires of antigen receptors and the destruction of pathogen genomes. We study the ancestors of these enzymes and other defense factors that are thought to be key players of immune responses in vertebrates including cytokines and mediators of innate immunity. Furthermore we employ bulk and single cell Omics and bioinformatics approaches to define the identity of immune cell lineages in invertebrates. This also enables the discovery conserved immune gene/function modules that allow revealing the evolutionary relationships of animal immune cell populations, including lymphocytes and killer cells.

Current Members

Fugmann, Sebastian D (Principal Investigator/Director) Contact

Contact

Institution: Chang Gung University

Address:
Chang Gung University
Department of Biomedical Sciences
259 Wenhua 1st Rd
Kwei-shan, Tao-Yuan
333, Taiwan

General/Lab Phone: +886-3-2118800 ext. 3836