Rachel A. Gottschalk, PhD

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology
  • Member, Graduate Program in Microbiology and Immunology (PMI)

Education & Training

  • Post-doctoral Fellowship, Laboratory of Systems Biology, NIAID, NIH
  • PhD in Immunology, Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, 2012
  • BS in Biology, Emory University, 2005

Research Interests

Understanding how extracellular cues are linked to gene expression is a fundamental challenge in biology, and more specifically, innate immune signal integration is central to understanding healthy versus aberrant regulation of inflammation. My laboratory uses quantitative approaches to address these problems, with major projects including (1) computational modeling of signaling-to-transcription in macrophages, (2) interrogating tissue-specific macrophage signaling, and (3) dissecting molecular determinants of monocyte and macrophage inflammatory function. We use experimental approaches, together with both data-driven and mechanistic modeling to integrate transcription factor activity, phosphorylation, and transcriptomic data to explore signaling mechanisms that shape stimulus-specific macrophage function. These efforts will yield insights into dysregulation of signaling and inflammation, while informing therapeutic strategies.

Publications

Cheemalavagu N, Shoger KE, Cao YM, Michalides BA, Botta SA, Faeder JR, Gottschalk RA. Predicting gene level sensitivity to JAK-STAT signaling perturbation using a mechanistic-to-machine learning framework. Cell Syst. Jan 17;15(1):37-48, 2024

Gottschalk R.A. Signaling is the pathway to macrophage function. Trends Immunol. May 29;S1471-4906(23)00080-7, 2023

Shoger K.E., Cheemalavagu N., Cao Y.M., Michalides B.A., Chaudhri V.K., Cohen J.A., Singh H., Gottschalk R.A. CISH attenuates homeostatic cytokine signaling to promote lung-specific macrophage programming and function. Sci Signal. 14(698):eabe5137, 2021

Gottschalk R.A.*#, Dorrington M.G.*, Dutta B., Krauss K.S., Martins A.J., Uderhardt S., Chan W., Tsang J.S., Torabi-Parizi P., Fraser I.D., Germain R.N.#. IFN-mediated negative feedback supports bacteria class-specific macrophage inflammatory responses. eLIFE. 2019;8:e46836, 2019

*co-first authors, #co-corresponding authors

Gottschalk R.A.#, Martins A.J., Angermann B.R., Dutta B., Ng C.E., Uderhardt S., Tsang J.S., Fraser I.D., Meier-Schellersheim M., Germain R.N.# Distinct NF-kB and MAPK activation thresholds uncouple steady-state microbe sensing from anti-pathogen inflammatory responses. Cell Syst. 2(6): 378-90, 2016
co-corresponding authors

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