Molecular Studies of Chromosomal Protein H-NS"

染色体蛋白H-NS的分子研究"

• 批准号: 9122048
• 负责人: Norman Higgins
• 金额: $ 28.5万
• 依托单位: University of Alabama at Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1992
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1992-01-15 至 1995-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9122048&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Molecular; Studies; Chromosomal; Protein; NS

Molecular architecture of chromosomes remains one of the major mysteries of modern genetics. In spite of impressive advances made in learning the nucleotide sequence of chromosomes, the mechanisms of packing functional DNA into the small space available is unsolved. One organizing mechanism is supercoiling. DNA is found supercoiled in all organisms to about the same extent. Another puzzle is the fact that only a fraction of the genetic information is actively used at any instant. Learning how DNA is organized in both active and inactive regions of chromosomes is known as the domain problem. Bacteriophage MU is one of the most useful tools for studying chromosome structure. Mu is a transposon that randomly inserts itself into bacterial chromosomes and creates its own supercoiled domain using host enzymes and proteins. Further, through novel Mu genetics, it was discovered that one of the most abundant chromosomal proteins in E. coli, H-NS, supercoils DNA. DNA supercoiled by H-NS is inactive for transcription. Thus, H-NS is a prime candidate for organizing inactive supercoiled domains. Experiments are designed to probe the structure of H-NS interactions with Mu DNA using genetic approaches as well as chemical and enzymatic probes and electron microscopy.

染色体的分子结构仍然是现代遗传学的主要奥秘之一。 尽管在学习染色体的核苷酸序列方面取得了令人印象深刻的进步，但尚未解决填充功能性DNA的机制，但仍未解决。 一种组织机制是超串联。 在所有生物体中都发现DNA在大约相同的程度上都被发现了。 另一个难题是，在任何瞬间，只有一小部分遗传信息被积极使用。 学习在染色体的活性和非活性区域中如何组织DNA被称为域问题。噬菌体MU是研究染色体结构的最有用的工具之一。 MU是一种转座子，将自己随机插入细菌染色体中，并使用宿主酶和蛋白质创建其自己的超螺旋结构域。 此外，通过新颖的MU遗传学，发现大肠杆菌，H-NS，Supercoils DNA中最丰富的染色体蛋白之一。 H-NS超级螺旋的DNA对于转录不活跃。 因此，H-NS是组织非活动超螺旋域的主要候选人。 实验旨在使用遗传方法以及化学和酶探针和电子显微镜探测H-NS与MU DNA的结构。