User:Dionne
Contact Info
Marc Dionne
G.22 Flowers Building
South Kensington Campus
Imperial College London
London SW7 2AZ
United Kingdom
+44 (0) 20 7594 5776
Education
- PhD, Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley
- BS, Mathematics and Physics, Yale University
Research Interests
We are interested in the mechanisms by which hosts affect the course of bacterial infections. This includes the effects of immune responses, both in terms of eradicating the pathogen and in terms of causing unintended damage to the host. In order to address these issues, we use a model system in which the fruit-fly Drosophila melanogaster is infected with the broad-spectrum pathogen Mycobacterium marinum, a close relative of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.
In the course of this work, we have found that this bacterial infection alters metabolic regulation in this host; the changes we observe are similar in many ways to the changes that are often observed in people with chronic infections. Our studies of the mechanistic basis of this metabolic change has led us to study the physiological regulation of metabolism in uninfected animals (since it has become clear that the changes induced by this infection are occurring via pathways not normally considered as important in metabolic regulation).
