Characterisation of a novel bacterial ribonucleoprotein complex analogous to eukaryotic processing (P) bodies in Escherichia coli

细菌需要营养才能生长。然而，在环境或人体内，细菌的生长往往受到营养限制。因此，细菌大部分时间都处于饥饿状态，因此无法生长。细菌应对营养匮乏的过程始于RNA的合成——这是开启基因反应的第一步。因此，了解RNA一旦合成，是如何让细菌应对营养饥饿是很重要的。这将使我们能够设计出新的干预策略来对抗致病细菌。在本项目中，由于氮是细菌细胞中大多数分子的基本元素，我们将使用氮饥饿作为营养胁迫模型来详细研究大肠杆菌如何管理RNA。特别是，我们将详细研究大肠杆菌中一个新的“RNA储存位点”，我们发现它在大肠杆菌如何应对氮饥饿中起着重要作用。我们假设这个“RNA储存地点”可能类似于一个类似的特征，叫做p体，它经常在我们身体和其他动物体内的应激细胞中形成。总之，该项目的结果将推进我们对细菌细胞功能的基础知识，从而为我们控制致病细菌提供急需的新信息和灵感。

Bacteria need nutrients to grow. However, in the environment or in the human body, bacterial growth is often compromised by nutrient limitation. Hence, bacteria spend the majority of their time in a starved and thus non-growing state. The processes that allow bacteria to cope with nutrient starvation begin with the synthesis of RNA - the first step in the reaction that switches on genes. Therefore, it is important to understand how the RNA, once synthesized, is managed to allow bacterial cope with nutrient starvation. This will allow us design novel interventional strategies to combat disease causing bacteria. In this project, since nitrogen represents an essential element of most molecules in the bacterial cell, we will use nitrogen starvation as a model nutrient stress to study in detail, how the bacterium Escherichia coli manages RNA. In particular, we will study in detail a novel 'site of RNA storage' in the E. coli, which we discovered to play an important role in how E. coli copes with nitrogen starvation. We posit that this 'site of RNA storage' could be akin to a similar feature, called the P-body, which is often formed in stressed cells found in our bodies and that of other animals. In summary, the results of this project will advance our fundamental knowledge of how the bacterial cell functions and thereby provide us with the much-needed new information and inspiration to control disease causing bacteria.