Ragon Institute

Lab Overview

The Evavold lab studies fundamental cellular decision making towards different cell fates using cell death programs as a model system. We have a particular interest in the intersection of microbiology and metabolism with impact on host cell survival or death.

Regulated cell death can serve different functions within the innate immune system. For example, immunologically silent cell death can remove unnecessary, damaged, or pre-malignant cells during development and homeostasis. Alternatively, during the early containment of a pathogen, inflammatory cell death can alert the immune system to a foreign invader. However, inflammatory cell death can become pathogenic during systemic infection or contribute to sterile autoimmunity and chronic inflammation. Conversely, acquired resistance to cell death programs can promote cancer progression or resistance to chemotherapies. Dysfunction of cell death regulation may underlie much of the pathology related to human diseases. Thus, we aim to uncover novel regulation in these processes using precision screening that combines genomic or chemical perturbations with synthetic biology models of discrete signaling nodes.