Isabelle Zink Lab

Archaea Immunity & Molecular Tools -
Isabelle Zink

Room: 3.026
Djerassiplatz 1 (UBB)
1030 Vienna, Austria
isabelle.zink@univie.ac.at

Research Focus

All living organisms face constant viral attack and have developed powerful defense strategies. While eukaryotic immunity is understood as a coordinated interplay of immune pathways, we still know very little about how antiviral defense is organized in prokaryotes, particularly in Archaea.

DECODING ARCHAEAL IMMUNITY
We investigate how archaeal immune systems sense, restrict, and survive virus infection. As most archaea encode multiple antiviral immune pathways, our core aim is to understand how co-existing systems function as an interconnected cellular network, by dissecting their molecular mechanisms, regulation, crosstalk with one another and with core physiology.
BUILDING TOOLS FROM ARCHAEAL IMMUNE SYSTEMS
We develop genetic systems for (non-)model Archaea by repurposing and engineering archaeal immune systems. Also, we generate molecular tools for in vitro applications.

Approaches

We combine in vivo and in vitro strategies to connect cellular function of immune systems with molecular mechanisms. In vivo studies (i.e., infection assays, imaging, genetic perturbations, omics) enable the investigation of immune pathways in their physiological context. In vitro studies (i.e., protein biochemistry, activity assays) allow us to resolve the molecular mechanisms allowing us to engineer systems rationally. We work with a collection of archaeal model organisms to study defense pathways in their native hosts and, where useful, to enable heterologous expression.