GENERATING A PROTEIN INTERACTION MAP OF A VIRAL KILLER TOXIN

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Microbial toxins account for the pathology of many serious diseases including cholera, anthrax, and diphtheria. Each year these diseases impact hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and in the case of anthrax, livestock. Baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, can also be afflicted by protein toxins that use the same cellular route of entry as the medically significant toxins mentioned above. This research will characterize a toxin that afflicts yeast, called K28, in order to gain a great understanding of toxin-cell interactions in general. By collaborating with the Yeast Resource Center we will be able to map the host proteins with which the two K28 toxin subunits interact. This information will help to clarify how the toxin binds to cells, how it enters cells and, ultimately, how the toxin exerts its lethal effects. Moreover, this work will clarify to what extent yeast toxins might be a good model system for understanding toxins important for human health and disease.