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Clarifying the role of SepIVA in polar growth of Streptomyces venezuelae

Kaiser, Sebastian (2021) MOBM02 20202
Degree Projects in Molecular Biology
Popular Abstract
Controlling growth of a cell

How incredible would it be to control growth of cells? One of the most basic mechanisms in life. This knowledge would be especially useful for treating threatening cells such as cancer cells or pathogenic bacteria. It would be lifesaving to understand and determine their growth. Here the focus is on growth of bacteria, particularly those belonging to the genus Streptomyces.

Cellular processes in every organism are controlled by proteins. Thus, I have studied the role of one protein named SepIVA. It is important to know where proteins are located inside the cell and where they carry out their work. Nowadays, we have the ability to make these proteins visible inside the cell. Our protein of interest was... (More)
Controlling growth of a cell

How incredible would it be to control growth of cells? One of the most basic mechanisms in life. This knowledge would be especially useful for treating threatening cells such as cancer cells or pathogenic bacteria. It would be lifesaving to understand and determine their growth. Here the focus is on growth of bacteria, particularly those belonging to the genus Streptomyces.

Cellular processes in every organism are controlled by proteins. Thus, I have studied the role of one protein named SepIVA. It is important to know where proteins are located inside the cell and where they carry out their work. Nowadays, we have the ability to make these proteins visible inside the cell. Our protein of interest was linked to a fluorescence protein making it possible to see the protein (SepIVA) through a fluorescence microscope. The resulting pictures we get are stunning, as you can see in Figure 1 below.

The picture on the right shows the Streptomyces bacteria under the fluorescence microscope and the green color derives from a fluorescent protein that was linked to the protein of interest (in this case SepIVA). A weak fluorescence is seen throughout the cells, indicating that the protein to some extent is distributed all over the cell, but also accumulates at the end of the cells called hyphal tips. Streptomyces growth occurs on these hyphal tips. Since peptidoglycan assembly of Streptomyces bacteria takes place at the hyphal tips, these observations led us to investigate whether SepIVA could have a role in cell wall growth.

To get a wider understanding of a protein, it was tested if this protein works together with another protein or if it is doing its job independently. Therefore, we checked for interaction with proteins found at the similar cellular position. This method revealed that there is another protein which seems to interact with SepIVA. To get more information about the function of SepIVA, it was examined how the bacteria behaves without having SepIVA. The analysis showed that the bacteria without SepIVA grows with less cell wall material, supporting that it may be involved in cell wall growth. The results may shed light on the mechanisms involved in bacterial growth.


How can it help us?
Streptomycetes are the bacteria which produce the most antibiotics used in medicine nowadays. If we can control their growth, it might be of industrial value. Additionally, streptomycetes exhibit close similarity in terms of growth to the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Understanding the growth of streptomycetes can therefore help to understand the growth of mycobacteria. This may lead to the invention of new antimicrobial drugs that target the proteins involved in growth.

Master’s Degree Project in Molecular Biology specialized in Microbiology 30 credits 2021
Department of Biology, Lund University

Advisor: Klas Flärdh
Microbiology Group/ Department of biology (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Kaiser, Sebastian
supervisor
organization
course
MOBM02 20202
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
language
English
id
9042114
date added to LUP
2021-03-18 11:22:19
date last changed
2021-03-18 11:22:19
@misc{9042114,
  author       = {{Kaiser, Sebastian}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Clarifying the role of SepIVA in polar growth of Streptomyces venezuelae}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}