biology

Sabra Klein

Sabra Klein is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sabra Klein rather than just read about it. In short: Sabra Klein is an American microbiologist who is a Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research considers how sex and gender impact the immune system.

Key takeaways

Sabra Klein belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sabra Klein to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sabra Klein from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sabra Klein is an American microbiologist who is a Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research considers how sex and gender impact the immune system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Klein investigated why men and women have different COVID-19 outcomes.

Early life and education Klein earned her bachelor's degree in psychology at Randolph–Macon College and graduated in 1992. She moved to the University of Georgia for her graduate studies, where she studied the impact of prenatal stress on the immune systems of rodents. She completed her doctoral research in behavioural neuroscience at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she studied the sex and species differences in rodent immune function. Klein was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Gregory E. Glass.

Research and career Klein investigated the mechanisms that allow rodents to carry hantaviridae. To do this she monitored the immune response of Norway rats infected with Seoul orthohantavirus and showed that they have high numbers of regulatory T cells. By inactivating regulatory T cells and monitoring the presence of orthohantavirus in the rodents, Klein showed that hantaviridae viruses achieve persistence by exploiting these regulatory T cells. This allows rodents to maintain hantaviridae infections. Her research may help us better predict how hantaviridae can be transmitted to humans. Whilst she started her academic career in neuroscience, Klein became more interested in immune system function. She is particularly interested in the differences between men and women's immune systems, and how they handle infectious diseases. Klein identified that the X chromosome was encoded with several genes that control the immune response. She believes that estrogen alters the response of immune cells, encouraging it to start making proteins and start or stop an inflammatory response. Whilst this stronger immune response can clear viruses faster in women, it can also cause immunopathology. It is known that hormones impact the progression of influenza, and in 2009 Klein was commissioned by the World Health Organization to understand how sex, gender and pregnancy impact the outcomes of influenza infection. In 2018 Klein was awarded $8 million from the National Institutes of Health to better understand how biological sex and age impact the efficacy of influenza vaccinations. As part of this research, Klein created a mechanistic study into how genetic and hormonal factors impacted mouse immunity. She demonstrated that biological sex impacted the efficacy of vaccinations, showing that female mice who received the 2009 flu pandemic vaccine produced more antibodies than male mice. Her findings may indicate that men need a different dose or more frequent influenza vaccination boosts to women. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Klein became interested in the differences between how men and women responded to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2). It is well documented that men have worse COVID-19 outcomes to women. Klein has indicated that this biological sex dependent disparity in outcomes is common to many viral infections that impact the respiratory tract. Both she and Angela Rasmussen have argued that there are behavioural as well as biological reasons that men are so susceptible to COVID-19. In 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Selected publications Klein, Sabra L.; Flanagan, Katie L. (October 2016). "Sex differences in immune responses". Nature Reviews Immunology. 16 (10): 626–638. doi:10.1038/nri.2016.90. ISSN 1474-1733. PMID 27546235. Klein, S.L. (2000). "The effects of hormones on sex differences in infection: from genes to behavior". Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 24 (6): 627–638. doi:10.1016/S0149-7634(00)00027-0. PMID 10940438. S2CID 31063828. Klein, S. L. (June 2004). "Hormonal and immunological mechanisms mediating sex differences in parasite infection". Parasite Immunology. 26 (6–7): 247–264. doi:10.1111/j.0141-9838.2004.00710.x. ISSN 0141-9838. PMID 15541029. S2CID 22258350.

Personal life Klein is married to Drew Maloney. In 2010 the couple created the Klein-Maloney Fellowship for Women in the Sciences.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sabra Klein

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sabra Klein claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sabra Klein before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sabra Klein ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sabra Klein

In research: Sabra Klein appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sabra Klein in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sabra Klein is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American microbiologists, COVID-19 researchers, Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sabra Klein outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Sabra Klein in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sabra Klein means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sabra Klein out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sabra Klein in simple terms?

Why does Sabra Klein matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sabra Klein?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sabra Klein.