Fighting off pathogens is a tour de force that must happen with speed and precision. A team of researchers at CeMM and MedUni Vienna led by Christoph Bock and Matthias Farlik has investigated how macrophages—immune cells that are the body’s first responders—master this challenge. Their study, published in Cell Systems (DOI: 10.1016/j.cels.2025.101346), offers a time-resolved analysis of the molecular processes that unfold when these cells encounter various pathogens. They developed a new method that combines gene editing and machine learning, which identified key regulators of macrophage immune responses.