The Beaudin Lab was established in 2016 at the University of California, Merced, in the Molecular and Cell Biology unit in the School of Natural Sciences. Our primary research focus is to understand the contribution of fetal hematopoietic, or blood, progenitors to adult immune function. Adult hematopoietic stem cells are both capable and responsible for generating all blood and immune cells across the lifespan. Recently, the advent of sophisticated fate-mapping or lineage tracing approaches has provided evidence that specific cell types of the adult immune system are not produced by adult hematopoietic stem cells. Instead, these unique cells that mediate tolerance, rapid response to infection, and have unique function in their resident tissues, are specified only during development from fetal progenitors. The Beaudin Lab is interested in defining the basic mechanisms regulating the establishment of these functionally-distinct cells during development, as well understanding how perturbation of development during this "limited window" of immune development drives immune dysfunction in adulthood.