Research Focus Teams
Cancer, COVID-19, Lung Disease, Arthritis
Research Interests
Cancer, Cell Adhesion Molecules, Immune response regulation, Inflammation, Innate immunity
Departments
Microbiology & Immunology
Bio
Pauline Johnson is a immunologist and microbiologist at UBC. Her research focuses on innate and adaptive immune mechanisms - in particular, the mobility of proteins in membranes, lymphocyte cell surface molecules, T cell signalling, leukocyte adhesion, and macrophages in lung inflammation.
Dr. Johnson was born in Yorkshire, England. She earned a BSc in biochemistry from Liverpool University in 1980, and a Ph.D from the University of Dundee in 1983. Her Ph.D. project was to determine the lateral and rotational mobility of membrane components measured by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching and fluorescence depletion recovery.
She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute in California, US under the supervision of Ian Trowbridge and at the MRC Cellular Immunology Unit at the University of Oxford, U.K. under the supervision of Alan F. Williams before joining the faculty at the University of British Columbia in 1991.
Johnson helped to establish the function of CD45 as a critical protein tyrosine phosphatase in T cell activation and defined the mechanisms regulating the interactions of the cell adhesion molecule CD44 with the matrix component, hyaluronan.
She held an MRC Scientist Award and was Co-Director of the Infection, Inflammation and Immunity Research Group at the Life Science Institute at UBC (2003-2009). She has served multiple times on the CIHR Immunology and Transplantation panel, including as Scientific Officer, as well as on other national and international review panels. She is a member of the CIHR III Institute Advisory Board (III institute = Inflammation, infection and immunity CIHR Institute).
MRC Scientist Award, MRC of Canada, 1999-2004
Women in Science Award for Community Leadership and Scientific Excellence, Minerva Foundation for B.C. Women, 2013