Christina M. Hull

The Hull Lab Website

Education

• B.S. 1992, University of Utah

• Ph.D. 2000, University of California – San Francisco (A.D. Johnson)

• Postdoctoral 2000-2003, Duke University (J. Heitman)

Honors & Awards

2003                    American Society for Cell Biology, Merton Bernfield Memorial Award and Presentation

2003-2008        Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences

2003                    BWF/Committee for the Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau Award

2004                    UW/HHMI, Career Development Start-Up Award

2005-2007         March of Dimes, Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award

2005-2007        UW Medical Education Research Committee, New Investigator Award

2006                   American Society for Microbiology, Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award

2010, 2015         UW Women in Science & Engineering Institute, Vilas Life Cycle Professorship

2015-2018         Hartwell Foundation, Individual Biomedical Research Award

2017-2020        HHMI, Gilliam Fellowship Mentor

Research Summary

Fungi are critical organisms in virtually all ecosystems on Earth, but as a group, they are very poorly understood. The mechanisms by which fungi reproduce and interact with their environments (including human hosts) are largely unknown. Nowhere are the consequences of this lack of understanding more apparent than in human disease. Fungi now represents the fourth most common cause of hospital-acquired infection, and therapeutic options for treating severe disease are extremely limited.

Research in my laboratory focuses on three broad areas: 1) understanding the molecular mechanisms that control fungal development and sporulation, 2) elucidating the basic properties of spores that allow them to be infectious particles, and 3) developing interventions to prevent and/or treat severe fungal diseases.

We use the meningitis-causing environmental fungus Cryptococcus as a model for our studies. Cryptococcus causes several hundred thousand deaths per year worldwide. Among the human fungal pathogens, Cryptococcus is the most amenable to laboratory analysis and represents a relatively facile system for the study of fungal development and virulence.

Using biochemical, genetic, molecular, cell biological, and bioengineering approaches we are determining the basic processes and mechanisms important for Cryptococcus to undergo sexual development (gene regulation, protein-DNA interactions, transcriptional networks), determining the resistance, growth, and molecular properties of spores (cell differentiation, developmental biology), and investigating how spores interact with mammalian hosts in vitro and in mice (infection, virulence).