mechanisms of HOst-Pathogen Interactions
In the Lamason lab, we investigate how intracellular bacterial pathogens such as Rickettsia parkeri and Listeria monocytogenes hijack host cell processes to promote infection. We use cellular, molecular, genetic, biochemical, and biophysical approaches to elucidate the mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions in order to reveal key insights into pathogenesis and host cell biology.
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RECENT Lab News
June 24, 2026: Congrats to Bill Sun, whose summer project was just selected by MIT to receive support from the Paul E. Gray (1954) UROP Fund!
June 23, 2026: Lots of great lab presentations from the lab are happening this summer. Three talks from Hannah Margolis at our building retreat, iCRIPs, and BBM, an award-winning poster by Elayne Fivenson at BBM, and several upcoming presentations from Elayne, Brandon Sit, and Patrick Woida at GRC conferences.
May 29, 2026: This week we celebrated Allison’s graduation and her last day in the lab. She will next venture into the world of patent law as a patent technical specialist. Good luck on your next adventure, Allison!
May 14, 2026: Today, the Biology department celebrated Becky’s promotion to Associate Professor with tenure. This promotion was only possible thanks to the hard work and creativity of the lab's former and current members.
May 12, 2026: Congrats to Clara Zhu for winning the Salvador E. Luria Prize from MIT Biology for her outstanding scholarship and research!
April 30, 2026: Allison’s first-author paper profiling the transcriptional changes during the early stages of a Rickettsia infection is officially out at mSphere.
April 6, 2026: Congrats to Dr. Allison Scott on successfully defending her PhD thesis today!
March 19, 2026: Hannah Margolis’ award-winning image of nuclear invaders is available here and on display at the KI. Congrats, Hannah, on winning a KI image award!!
February 19, 2026: Our latest preprint is out from first author Patrick Woida, which details a surface display proximity ligation system for profiling host proteins recruited to the Listeria surface during intracellular infection. In this study, we discover bacterial effector-mediated recruitment of a host deubiquitinase that supports cell-to-cell spread in non-phagocytic cells.
January 29, 2026: Clara Zhu gave a phenomenal talk at today's Biology Undergraduate Research Symposium.
January 5, 2026: Allison’s first author paper is out on bioRxiv. Here, we used a hybrid-capture RNA-seq technology to profile the early stages of infection and found that many genes exhibited distinct temporal signatures.
January 1, 2026: Welcome to our newest UROP, Bill Sun! Bill is teaming up with postdoc Elayne to study Rickettsia envelope biology.
October 29, 2025: Check out our latest preprint from first author Brandon Sit! Here, we used a whole-genome screen to find host factors that regulate rickettsial fitness and discovered that the host isomerase PPIA promotes surface exposure of Sca2 - a rickettsial autotransporter protein that enables actin-based motility. This work describes an entirely unexpected mechanism by which the host controls autotransporter biology and pathogen virulence.
September 5, 2025: Congrats to Jane Lodwick for being named a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow!!
LATEST PAPERS
Proximity labeling of the Listeria monocytogenes surface reveals pathogen control of a host deubiquitinase
Hybrid capture RNA-seq defines temporal gene expression in Rickettsia
Host cyclophilin-mediated maturation of an obligate intracellular bacterial surface virulence factor
