Download Shining a (UV) light on the regulatory dark matter of bacteria

Weekly Seminar/23rd May/F7B322 (1:00 pm)
Shining a (UV) light on the regulatory dark matter of
bacteria
Dr. Jai Tree,
School of Biotechology and Biomolecular Sciences, UNSW
This seminar will explore the functions of bacterial non-coding RNAs in virulence
gene regulation
Abstract:
Bacteria rapidly respond to changing environments during infection and require a
diverse array of protein and RNA-based gene regulators to coordinate gene
expression. Transcriptome sequencing has demonstrated that all bacterial genomes
transcribe non-coding RNAs but the functions of the vast majority remain unknown.
To address this, we have developed a high throughput methodology, termed RNase
E-CLASH, for sequencing ncRNAs-mRNA pairs captured in vivo. We demonstrate that
RNase E-CLASH is able to profile the ncRNA-interactome providing high-throughtput
functional data for hundreds of known and novel ncRNAs. Using this data we
demonstrate that the ncRNA (Esr41), transcribed by the human enteric pathogen
enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), can confer complete resistance to the antibiotic,
colicin 1A, through post-transcriptional repression of the colicin 1A receptor, CirA.
EHEC isolates cause potential fatal kidney damage by expression of Shiga toxins that are
encoded on bacteriophage. We have found that the bacteriophage are teeming with ncRNA
and our most recent work has begun to explore how these regulatory RNAs contribute to
Shiga toxin expression and bacteriophage propogation.
Biography of Jai Bio:
Dr Tree is Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at the School of Biotechology
and Biomolecular Sciences, UNSW. He received his PhD in Microbiology from
the University of Queensland before moving to the University of Edinburgh for postdoctoral
studies
on
transcriptional
regulation
of virulence
genes
in Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC). He joined the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology
at the University of Edinburgh in 2010 and began using UV-crosslinking techniques
to study post-transcriptional regulation by non-coding RNAs in EHEC. In 2014 he
moved to the Peter Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne but,
realizing that the beach is better than coffee and trams, quickly moved to UNSW to
take up a teaching and research position. His lab studies non-coding RNA function in
EHEC, MRSA, and a few other bad bugs.