Biological weapons and emerging infectious diseases represent a category of serious and growing threats to our national security. Pathogens that are released into our communities—either intentionally or accidentally—may very well produce infectious-disease outbreaks with devastating results.
A unique lab-on-a-chip tool, MICA enables researchers to precisely target, sort, and measure samples as small as a single cell in an automated system that includes flow cytometry.
One way in which Sandia bioscientists are addressing this threat is by pursuing a fundamental understanding of the biological principles underlying known and emerging infectious diseases. To fight these new pathogens, we must first understand how they work, so Sandia has marshaled significant resources in this direction, particularly in molecular pathways and cell signaling for emerging infectious diseases. We are also employing a wide breadth of Sandia’s computational and experimental capabilities to provide a deeper understanding of pathogenesis and new ways to detect, interdict, and mitigate infectious disease.
In addition, to address the challenge of understanding both the actions of single cells and the interactions of these cells with their environments, we have developed an integrated platform for single-cell manipulation and cellular-signaling interrogation. The use of this platform, which we call Microscale Immune and Cell Analysis (MICA), is already resulting in new discoveries in innate immunity and host–pathogen interactions at the molecular level.
Cellular-signaling pathways and transduction networks are ubiquitous in living systems, forming the fundamental action–reaction communications chain in processes such as host–pathogen interactions in the immune system and cellular differentiation. We have selected host–pathogen interactions in the innate immune system as a primary area of biological emphasis for cellular-signaling work because of their importance to the underlying mechanisms of microbial pathogenesis in infectious disease.
We have chosen to focus on cellular-signaling pathways that are known to be important to host–pathogen interactions. In addition to signaling pathways, we are working on the structure and dynamics of the early stages of host–pathogen interactions, including studies of toll-like receptors (TLRs), receptor–ligand interactions, and receptor–receptor interactions.
Following are some examples of our work in microbiology and cell signaling: