Characterization of Proteins in the FUR regulon
Start Date
2023 2:15 PM
Location
Alter Hall Poster Session 1 - 2nd floor
Abstract
The Ferric Uptake Regulator (FUR) is a transcriptional repressor found in many bacterial species. The FUR regulon has been determined for E. coli, Shewanella oneidensis, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In each of these species, FUR was found to regulate about 100 proteins total, most of which are involved in iron uptake in some way. However, about 30 proteins in each species did not have an identified function at the time of the publication. In this project, we wanted to assign function to as many of these unknown proteins as possible. Since the time of the regulon papers, some of those unknown proteins have been further characterized, but several remain uncharacterized. For these proteins, we used tools from the BASIL curriculum to predict their functions. The BASIL curriculum uses a series of modules that use bioinformatic methods to compare the structure and sequence of unknown proteins with proteins of known function. These modules use programs such as SPRITE and Dali to compare active-site structure and overall protein structure (respectively) with other proteins. BLAST and Interpro are used to perform sequence analyses of the candidate proteins. With functions predicted for some of the proteins in the FUR regulon, future work will focus on obtaining those proteins to test our predicted functions.
Characterization of Proteins in the FUR regulon
Alter Hall Poster Session 1 - 2nd floor
The Ferric Uptake Regulator (FUR) is a transcriptional repressor found in many bacterial species. The FUR regulon has been determined for E. coli, Shewanella oneidensis, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. In each of these species, FUR was found to regulate about 100 proteins total, most of which are involved in iron uptake in some way. However, about 30 proteins in each species did not have an identified function at the time of the publication. In this project, we wanted to assign function to as many of these unknown proteins as possible. Since the time of the regulon papers, some of those unknown proteins have been further characterized, but several remain uncharacterized. For these proteins, we used tools from the BASIL curriculum to predict their functions. The BASIL curriculum uses a series of modules that use bioinformatic methods to compare the structure and sequence of unknown proteins with proteins of known function. These modules use programs such as SPRITE and Dali to compare active-site structure and overall protein structure (respectively) with other proteins. BLAST and Interpro are used to perform sequence analyses of the candidate proteins. With functions predicted for some of the proteins in the FUR regulon, future work will focus on obtaining those proteins to test our predicted functions.
