The immune system is constantly exposed to food-derived molecules, yet the specific dietary antigens that shape immune responses remain largely unknown. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Nagashima lab at Harvard, Lisa aims to identify specific dietary antigens within a complex human diet and determine how components of human food shape immune responses in mouse models.
Lisa received her PhD at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Dr. Julien Prudent, where she investigated MTFR1L, a previously uncharacterized mitochondrial protein. Through her work she found that MTFR1L is a substrate of AMPK and functions as an anti-fusion factor regulating mitochondrial dynamics through phosphorylation.