# Quantitative control of phosphorylation and mechanistic links to immune cell decisions

> **NIH NIH R35** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2022 · $397,500

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Cells integrate distinct stimuli through biochemical signaling pathways to induce the appropriate transcriptional
programs. In these signaling-to-transcription networks, the rapid addition and removal of post-translational
modifications impact the activity and specificity of transcription factors (TFs) to inform resultant cellular function.
Understanding how extracellular cues are linked to gene expression is a fundamental challenge in
biology. Existing signaling-to-transcription efforts are often constrained in scope, describing signaling events in
detail with little transcriptional insights, or focusing on a few static signaling features while addressing more
comprehensive genomic questions. My laboratory is addressing this problem in the context of signal transducers
and activators of transcription (STATs), a family of TFs that integrate complex cytokine stimuli to inform a range
of pro- to anti-inflammatory immune programs. We propose both data-driven and mechanistic modeling
approaches to integrate TF dynamics, global phosphorylation, and transcriptomic data to 1) explore signaling
mechanisms that shape stimulus-specific STAT phosphorylation dynamics and functions dependent on these
dynamics, and 2) systematically identify phosphorylation events and STAT-cooperating TFs that predict specific
gene sets. These efforts to link dynamic signaling to gene expression profiles are a step towards identifying and
manipulating the biochemical events required for healthy versus pathology-associated gene expression.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10499072
- **Project number:** 1R35GM146896-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Rachel A Gottschalk
- **Activity code:** R35 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $397,500
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-07-19 → 2027-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10499072

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10499072, Quantitative control of phosphorylation and mechanistic links to immune cell decisions (1R35GM146896-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10499072. Licensed CC0.

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