Bailis Laboratory



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The Bailis Lab investigates the rules by which fundamental biomolecules are generated and interact, and therefore must be incorporated at every stage of evolution that life is selected on. The lab is exploring the logic of how these biochemical networks are organized by leveraging a CRISPR screening system compatible with gene editing in nearly every primary immune cell population. This technology allows the lab team to perform high-throughput genetic screens, both in vitro and in in vivo adoptive transfer models, to interrogate metabolism at the network level. 

Research in the Bailis Lab is currently focused on how spatial compartmentalization of metabolism regulates immune cell state, and how the biochemical state controls immune cell signaling potential.

Multicellular animals compartmentalize biochemical information in multiple layers (among organelles within cells, between cells within tissues, and throughout organ systems within animals). The Bailis Lab aims to elucidate how the immune system utilizes biochemical partitioning to regulate processes such as functional reprogramming and how these cells sense alterations in tissue homeostasis.

In addition, metabolism can regulate signal transduction in a bottom-up fashion, through the post-translation modification (PTM) of signaling intermediates and histones. The lab is investigating how the biochemical potential of a cell, via PTMs, has the capacity to tune both the quality and quantity of signaling that occurs as well as how that signal is received at target genes in the nucleus.