Dr. Bommhardt is a leader in the Akt kinase signaling pathway. My lab is interested in IL-7 receptor signaling of which Akt is a major signal transducing molecule. Our goal is to investigate the cellular effect of constitutive Akt activation in substituting IL-7 signaling and thus to understand the downstream signaling effect of IL-7. To this end, we analyzed constitutively active Akt transgenic mice, and found that Akt regulates IL-7 responsiveness in CD8+ T cells by downregulating IL-7 receptor expression and transcription.