Pei-Chung Lee
Assistant Professor
4137 Biological Sciences Bldg.
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Department
Pei-Chung Lee
Research interest(s)/area of expertise
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Host-pathogen interactions
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Innate immunity
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Microbiology/bacteriology
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Post-translational modifications
Research
Our laboratory is interested in infection strategies used by bacterial pathogens to cause diseases. We use multidisciplinary approaches to dissect the molecular interactions between the emerging pathogen, Legionella pneumophila and their host cells.
Our team welcomes motivated students from all backgrounds (graduate and undergraduate students) to join the lab and explore exciting areas of host-pathogen interactions with us.
When contacting, please let us know how your research interest aligns with our reasech focus and your learning goals in our lab.
Education
- Postdoctoral Fellow, National Institutes of Health (Mentor: Dr. Matthias Machner), 2019
- Postdoctoral Scholar, Case Western Reserve University (Mentor: Dr. Arne Rietsch), 2014
- Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University (Mentor: Dr. Arne Rietsch), 2011
Awards and grants
Excellent in Teaching Award, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Wayne State University 2024
Regulation of Innate Immunity by the Hippo Kinases, R21, NIAID/NIH, Role: PI
University Research Grant 2020-21, Wayne State University, Role: PI (completed)
Selected publications
- Yu-Ting Su#, Sydney M. Quagliato#, Brendyn M. St. Louis, Mohamed H Abdelaziz , Yuan He, Devanand Bondage, Stephanie S. Lehman, Pei-Chung Lee* (2025) Activation of the conserved Hippo kinases by inflammasome-triggered proteolytic cleavage controls programmed cell death in macrophages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (in press; #equal contribution, *corresponding author)
- Brendyn M. St. Louis, Sydney M. Quagliato, Yu-Ting Su, Gregory Dyson, Pei-Chung Lee* (2024) The Hippo kinases control inflammatory Hippo signaling and restrict bacterial infection in phagocytes. mBio (*corresponding author)
- Brendyn M. St. Louis, Sydney M. Quagliato, Pei-Chung Lee* (2023) Bacterial effector kinases and strategies to identify their target host substrates. Frontiers in Microbiology-Infectious Agents and Disease (*corresponding author)
- Pei-Chung Lee, Ksenia Beyrakhova, Caishuang Xu, Michal T. Boniecki, Mitchell H. Lee, Chisom J. Onu, Andrey M. Grishin, Matthias P. Machner, Miroslaw Cygler (2020) Structural insight into a bacterial kinase-host activator complex that exploits the mammalian Hippo pathway. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
- Pei-Chung Lee and Matthias P. Machner (2018) The Legionella effector kinase LegK7 hijacks the host Hippo pathway to promote infection. Cell Host & Microbe
- Pei-Chung Lee and Arne Rietsch (2015) Fueling type III secretion. Trends in Microbiology
- Pei-Chung Lee, Stephanie Zmina, Charles M. Stopford, Jonida Toska, Arne Rietsch (2014) Control of type III secretion activity and substrate specificity by the cytoplasmic regulatory protein PcrG. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
Google scholar publication list