Cadwell Lab

Department members sit at a very long table in the hallway eating a pre-Thanksgiving potluck feast.

Faculty search announcement 2025: Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Microbiology at UT Southwestern. We seek candidates working in microbial pathogenesis (some preference may be given to bacterial pathogens). Come join our community! (1/5) www.utsouthwestern.edu/departments/...

Overall, we discovered that an intervention as simple as changing cages can control duration of viral infection in mice. Huge shoutout 🙏 to Christin and coauthors, the Gnotobiotics core at both Penn and NYU, and PennCHOP microbiome program for making this study possible 5/5

Cage change is a stress-inducing event for 🐭! We found that the fluctuation of glucocorticoids (hormones released under stress) contributes to viral clearance, and interference with this hormonal stress response actually inhibits MuAstV clearance after cage change! 4/5

Although continuous exposure to the viral reservoir does contribute to this persistent infection, we found that there is more at play here 🤔 In fact, cage change induces the activation of CD8 T cells and an interferon response in intestinal epithelial cells, driving the clearance of MuAstV. 3/5

We found in this study that Murine Astrovirus (MuAstV), an enteric RNA virus that is prevalent in wild, lab, and pet store mice, persists indefinitely in mice when they remain unperturbed in their cage. However, MuAstV is rapidly cleared after we change a mouse’s cage 🤯 2/5

Environmental stress drives clearance of a persistent enteric virus in mice - Nature Microbiology Cage change of mice with persistent murine astrovirus infection triggers stress responses marked by corticosterone fluctuation, which is followed by CD8 T cell activation and induction of epithelial a...

Congratulations @christinviral.bsky.social and team for publishing this super cool discovery 😎 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Here’s a quick summary of our cool findings about how stress due to simple mouse husbandry drives clearance of persistent enteric viral infection 🦠🐭 1/5

Review @natimmunol.nature.com @cadwelllab.bsky.social
Gene–environment interactions shape the host–microbial interface in inflammatory bowel disease
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations @christinviral.bsky.social !!! Amazing job starting from an intriguing observation and drilling down to an exciting immune mechanism!

Thanks for highlighting our paper @lozanzi.bsky.social 🙏

It's time to make friends with your viruses Viruses are in us. They're even part of us. Now researchers want to map the human virome

www.salon.com/2025/06/01/i...

Featuring @cadwelllab.bsky.social and @angierasmussen.bsky.social

Chris Hunter @kingofpathogens.bsky.social and colleagues review parasite and host immune factors that impact the development of a mucosal vaccine for #Cryptosporidium : www.mucosalimmunology.org/article/S193...

Once again, thank you NIH for making this possible and our amazing coauthors. Special shoutout to coauthors Patty Martin and @torreslab.bsky.social for launching this project 🚀 5/n

Maybe ATG16L1 T300A is under balancing selection, like hemoglobin and APOL1 variants that are protective if you have 1 copy but 2 copies are bad (sickle cell/kidney disease)🤷‍♀️? Lots of questions surrounding mechanism that we’re continuing to examine 4/n

Turns out mice heterozygous for the variant, but not homozygotes, are highly protected from Salmonella and Listeria due to enhanced inflammasome🔥 activity! Macrophages from T300A heterozygous humans displayed similar enhanced inflammasome 🔥 3/n

a rabbit from the secret life of pets is making a funny face and saying heh . ALT: a rabbit from the secret life of pets is making a funny face and saying heh .

Most people have at least 1 copy of the ATG16L1 T300A variant even though it’s associated with increased susceptibility to Crohn’s disease. What gives? 2/n

Congratulations Xiaomin Yao and Eugene Rudensky for publishing this story @cp-immunity.bsky.social! Big thank you to NIH for making this work possible. Here’s a brief summary of this 🤯 finding about a gene variant that YOU 🫵 most likely have 1/n

Congratulations to Susan Weiss (@PennMicro), Dennis Discher, Cherie Kagan (@pennengineering.bsky.social), Michael Jones-Correa & Sophia Rosenfeld (@PennSAS) on their election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences! tinyurl.com/rtdecs92

Fantastic. Congrats!!!

Your yearly reminder to acknowledge the core facilities you use and their staff scientists in your papers. These scientists are a crucial part of the scientific ecosystem and to continue to exist they need tangible credit for their work. Plus their associated expertise adds credibility to your work.

How Measles Attacks an Unvaccinated Child (Gift Article) With falling vaccination rates and outbreaks that have caused more than 580 U.S. cases and at least one death, health experts expect hundreds or even thousands more to be infected in the coming months...

In other airborne news, here's a fabulous visual explanation of what measles does once it floats into your body. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Immune targeting and host-protective effects of the latent stage of Toxoplasma gondii Nature Microbiology - In vivo and in silico analyses suggest that bradyzoite-directed immunity contributes to control of cyst numbers, tissue damage and mortality in mice.

For those still interested in infection and the brain - here is a nice mix of math and pathogens - that tests the function of latency and how the immune system deals with a neuronal infection. Lots going on here to dissect - but turns out latency benefits host and parasite.
rdcu.be/efknc

What is up Bluesky!
I'm an Associate Editor working at #PLOSBiology with everything related with #Microbiology and #Immunology
Looking forward to all #science posts!
Also, if you wanna book a meet-the-editor zoom meeting with me and talk about your work, just click scheduler.zoom.us/melissa-vazq...!

Beautiful work @edelblumlab.bsky.social !

Rewilding catalyzes maturation of the humoral immune system Releasing laboratory mice into the natural environment enhanced maturation and activation of the humoral immune system.

@cadwelllab.bsky.social has already posted about it, but we do have a new paper out about rewilding the immune system! This one is led by Ying-Han Chen (then NYU, now Academia Sinica) and Kimberly Zaldana (NYU), and it dives into the world of B cells.
www.science.org/doi/full/10....

There's more exciting work to come from the rewilding experiments, so please do stay tuned for work from @grahammunology.bsky.social @cadwelllab.bsky.social et al.

Let's not forget that apart from science advocacy the Rauch lab also does kick-ass science!
Together with the @psmitchej.bsky.social and Tait Wojno labs, we show that #tuftcells can induce specific protective signaling after recognition of intracellular bacterial infection via the #inflammasome!

We are eternally 🙏 that the NIH officers and reviewers have expressed enthusiasm for these types of studies. Return in investment for the growing dirty mouse field is huge and will help industry, and gov’t 💰is essential to support the next phase 10/n

We previously received a great score on an NIH grant and hope we can get it funded by incorporating helpful suggestions from reviewers who spent lots of time reviewing these grants together with NIH staff 9/n

Investigators and equipment are NSF and NIH, both direct + indirect funds. Ying-Han and Kim are supported by Charles Revson and @hhmi.org fellowships. @hhmi.org contributed seed funding (through faculty scholars award) for initial studies and 3 universities 🎓chipped in infrastructure 8/n

In addition to our amazing coauthors, we thank the funding sources for making this possible. This is a fantastic example of how gov’t 💰 is maximized by private and university 🎓 funding 7/n