| Affiliations: | STEM Research Leadership |
| Project Leader: | Brittany Shapiro bshap48@tamu.edu Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology |
| Faculty Mentor: | Jon Skare, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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TBA |
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Team Size:
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4 |
| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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Presenting your research in lab meetings and in the form of posters. Potentially contributing to a manuscript to receive co-authorship.
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Team Needs:
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Lab skills/technical knowledge: molecular biology, microbiology. |
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Description:
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Post-transcriptional regulation is a mechanism that modulates protein levels in living systems in a dynamic manner. In the case of Borrelia burgdorferi, gene expression changes are a hallmark of the bacterium moving between the arthropod vector and infected hosts. However, the details of how B. burgdorferi adapts to host-specific signals are still being determined. Previously, BosR was identified as a global regulator that affects rpoS, a master switch for infectivity-associated mammalian-specific gene expression. These studies demonstrated that a bosR mutant dramatically reduced RpoS, decreasing global RpoS-regulation, including the virulence-associated ospC locus, which is essential for the establishment of mammalian infection. Recent data indicates that BosR also serves as a chaperone for small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs). We hypothesize that BosR-bound sRNAs provide an additional layer of regulation to modulate responses needed to adapt to their environment appropriately. Specifically, BosR-bound sRNAs are predicted to target mRNA transcripts, resulting in either their degradation or enhanced translation. We will work together through the ARP to study different chaperone-dependent sRNA and transcript interactions to unravle this novel regulatory scheme is B. burgdorferi. |