Why should cell biologists study microbial pathogens?

Welch, Matthew D.

Cells of the immune system are often targeted by pathogens to avoid or subvert immune defenses. Certain facets of the interaction between pathogens and immune cells lie at the interface between the fields of immunology and cell biology. The study of such areas is of increasing importance in understanding general mechanisms of pathogenesis, and may prove particularly relevant in harnessing the and host cell. Surprisingly, lysosomes participate in exocytosis at the invasion site, which facilitates invasion (Tardieux et al., 1992 (Tardieux et al., , 1994 . It was later revealed that the Ca 2+ -dependent fusion of lysosomes (Reddy et al., 2001) and other organelles (Shen et al., 2005) plays a key role in repairing plasma membrane wounds in uninfected cells. Along with work on T. cruzi, studying how intracellular bacterial pathogens such as Legionella pneumophila, the causative agent of Legionnaire's disease, manipulate membrane-trafficking pathways is advancing our understanding of these pathways in uninfected cells (Asrat et al., 2014) .