Christin Herrmann

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

I'm thrilled to announce I'll be joining the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the University of Florida in January 2026! My lab will study RNA virus-host interactions with a particular focus on the spatial regulation of viral replication and innate immune activation. genoyerlab.com

Congrats! That's awesome news.

Excited to share this collaborative study with @ritatamayo.bsky.social showing that E. faecalis influences C. diff morphology through the phase variable CmrRST system! This work was co-led by the amazing team of @ashleyweiss.bsky.social and Jilarie Santos-Santiago!

Thank you!

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

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you Sunny!

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...

#NewResearch

🚨Out now!

Environmental stress drives clearance of a persistent enteric virus in mice 🐀
@christinviral.bsky.social @cadwelllab.bsky.social

#MicroSky #VirusSky

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you to all of my amazing co-authors in the @cadwelllab.bsky.social and Koralov lab!

In addition, we also see these inflammatory responses after cage change in mock mice. This highlights that we should be aware of the side effects common mouse husbandry practices can introduce into experiments.

This initially represses immune responses and allows virus expansion. Once stress is resolved, CD8 T cells in the gut become activated and induce inflammatory responses in the epithelium leading to virus clearance. Therefore, manipulating the environment we can shorten the duration of an infection.

We noticed variability in the length of infection for one of our enteric model viruses, murine Astrovirus, and discovered that the virus was cleared because of the stress following cage changes. The new environment leads to production of stress hormones such a glucocorticoids.

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...

Excited to share with you my postdoctoral work published today in Nature Microbiology!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We have known for a while that stress can impact the outcome of infectious diseases; however, we reveal in our paper that it is not always detrimental.

Dendritic cells activate pyroptosis and effector-triggered apoptosis to restrict Legionella infection | mBio The innate immune system senses bacterial pathogens by employing pattern recognition receptors that detect pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and guard proteins that monitor pathogen disru...

Thrilled that our latest paper showing that DCs undergo either pyroptosis or apoptosis upon bacterial blockade of host translation to restrict Legionella is now online at the @asm.org journal mBio! Congrats to 1st author @vvazquez.bsky.social & co-authors! 🎉 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Incredibly honored to be selected as a @bwfund.bsky.social Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease. Thank you to @bwfund.bsky.social for supporting our work - I am thrilled to join this amazing community! And special thank you to my AMAZING team (past & present) for getting us here!

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

Excited to share our new work in @aga-gastro.bsky.social! We show that dietary fiber alters the window of susceptibility to C. difficile following antibiotic exposure. This really fantastic study was co-led by an amazing team @rinniehewlett.bsky.social @alhecht.bsky.social and Amanda PeBenito.

1/3 It’s official 🙌🏽
The Reyes Ruiz Lab is opening in 2026 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences. My lab will focus on host antibacterial effectors and adaptation of bacteria to host-imposed stress during S. aureus infections.

Nerve- and airway-associated interstitial macrophages mitigate SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis via type I interferon signaling The local immunoregulatory mechanisms that safeguard the host from excessive lung infection inflammation remain unclear. Yeung, Yokota et al. uncover the essential role of nerve- and airway-associated...

Excited to share our latest study
@cp-immunity.bsky.social. Heartfelt thanks to the editorial and review teams , to my co-first @yeungadventures.bsky.social, our co-authors, and to @khannakm.bsky.social
for his outstanding mentorship throughout! Pls read/share!👇
www.cell.com/immunity/ful...

Carman Li Lab

Our lab has opened at the Cancer Biology Department and the Basser Center for BRCA @upenn.bsky.social! We study new mechanisms of hereditary cancers and their implications for sporadic cancers, building on my training with @labjacks.bsky.social and Joan Brugge.

Join us! tinyurl.com/CarmanLiLabH...

Gastrointestinal colonization as a source of Staphylococcus aureus in atopic dermatitis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.17.648849v1

Bovine H5N1 binds poorly to human-type sialic acid receptors - Nature Nature - Bovine H5N1 binds poorly to human-type sialic acid receptors

After 8 months of peer review, our manuscript was published today @nature.com showing that bovine H5N1 viruses bind poorly to human-type sialic acid receptors. We now know that the virus is only 1 HA substitution away from efficiently binding human receptors.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Indels allow antiviral proteins to evolve functional novelty inaccessible by missense mutations Tenthorey et al. compare the effects of missense and indel mutations on the acquisition of functional novelty by the rapidly evolving antiviral protein TRIM5α. They find that single indel mutations al...

Proud of this work, led by the amazing Jeannette Tenthorey (now Assistant Professor at UCSF), demonstrating the adaptive power of single indel mutations in host-virus arms races, but a little sad that this is the coda to her amazing postdoc in the Malik & Emerman labs.

www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

NIH Grants Fueled $95 Billion In FY 2024 Economic Activity, Finds New Report National Institutes of Health grants generated almost $95 billion in economic activity nationwide in FY 2024 according to a new report by United for Medical Research.

In 2024 NIH grant awards supported 407,782 jobs and $94.58 billion in new economic activity nationwide, the largest figure in the history of the report. www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

As federal funding for research is uncertain, we need to diversify funding sources for our PhD students.

Here is a comprehensive list of >160 PhD fellowships and funding opportunities, mostly from private foundations and scientific societies.

Download it here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

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

Congratulations Ying-Han Chen and Kim Zaldana for showing how B cells are altered when lab mice 🐭 are released outdoors! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Here’s some context for the paper followed by how gov’t 💰 + other sources combine to make these types of studies possible 1/n

An oral norovirus vaccine tablet was safe and elicited mucosal immunity in older adults in a phase 1b clinical trial An oral norovirus vaccine tablet is safe and induces strong mucosal and systemic immune responses in adults aged 55 to 80 years.

In the US alone, each year, norovirus causes ~20 million acute gastroenteritis cases, 70,000 hospitalizations, up to 800 deaths, at a cost of ~$10.6 billion annually.
An pill vaccine shows considerable promise in a clinical trial, establishing mucosal immunity
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...