Margaret Alexander

Defining Mechanisms of Diet-Host-Microbiota-Immune Interactions

The Alexander lab is exploring mechanistic interactions between diet, microbiota, and immune responses in immune-related diseases such as autoimmunity. We employ diverse techniques including mouse models, gnotobiotics, anaerobic microbiology, activity guided fractionation use high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), mass spectrometry, bioinformatics, cell culture assays, and sequencing to uncover mechanisms driving diet-microbiota-immune interactions. Our goal is to decode how complex diets impact disease and how disease-associated microbiota members affect immune responses during disease by defining the bioactive diet, host, and microbial metabolites and how they signal to have consequences for disease. Additionally, we aim to develop and test novel dietary interventions targeted at how autoimmune-associated microbes impact immune responses to improve outcomes in disease leveraging machine learning and bioinformatics of metagenomics, metabolomics, and immune profiling datasets.