Chelsea Witte-Garcia assists the firm in patent prosecution in the areas of microbiology, immunology and next generation sequencing technologies. She has extensive knowledge in the areas of infectious disease therapeutics, vaccine development, cell signaling, and molecular and cellular biology.

Prior to joining Wolf Greenfield, Chelsea was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Molecular and Microbiology department at Tufts Medical Center. There, her research focused on respiratory pathogens and the development of novel vaccine platforms to limit infection. During this research, she also implemented next generation sequencing technologies coupled with traditional bacterial transposon mutagenesis to identify bacterial genetic factors required for survival in different environments.

Chelsea’s doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley focused on understanding how mammalian cells recognize infection with intracellular pathogens, and particularly how cytosolic signaling pathways are stimulated by pathogens and the immunological consequences. Also in this work, Chelsea used molecular and biochemical techniques to understand bacterial small molecule signaling pathways important for bacterial growth, survival and pathogenesis. Chelsea’s doctoral work resulted in the publication of a number of scientific papers.

During her research tenure, Chelsea also taught multiple laboratory and lecture courses to undergraduate as well as graduate students.

Chelsea has received a number of research awards and fellowships for her doctoral and postdoctoral work.

Blogs

Scientific Publications

Witte CE, Whiteley AT, Burke TP, Sauer JD, Portnoy DA, Woodward JJ. (2013) Cyclic diAMP is critical for Listeria monocytogenes growth, cell wall homeostasis, and establishment of infection. MBio. 4(3):e00282-13.

Witte CE, Archer KA, Rae CS, Sauer JD, Woodward JJ, Portnoy DA. (2012) Innate immune pathways triggered by Listeria monocytogenes and their role in the induction of cellmediated immunity. Adv Immunol. 113:135-56.

Sauer JD, Witte CE, Zemansky J, Hanson B, Lauer P, Portnoy DA. (2010) Listeria monocytogenes triggers AIM2mediated pyroptosis upon infrequent bacteriolysis in the macrophage cytosol. Cell Host Microbe. 7(5):412-9.

Lightfield KL, Persson J, Brubaker SW, Witte CE, von Moltke J, Dunipace EA, Henry T, Sun YH, Cado D, Dietrich WF, Monack DM, Tsolis RM, Vance RE. (2008) Critical function for Naip5 in inflammasome activation by a conserved carboxy-terminal domain of flagellin. Nat Immunol. (10):1171-8.