Toward quantitative description of biological nanomachines: the example of contractile injection systems in viruses and bacteria
Event details
| Date | 16.02.2015 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Prof. Petr Leiman |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
The process of protein and DNA translocation across lipid membranes is central to the function of any organism. Bacteria and viruses that infect bacteria have evolved very sophisticated multicomponent systems for transferring various substrates from and into the bacterial cell. These biological nanomachines work with incredible efficiency, but little is understood about how they achieve this efficiency or how they select their substrates. One of the major obstacles to our understanding of these systems is a lack of information about their structure. Over the past few years, we have made a significant progress in describing the structure of some of the most complex of these nanomachines - the bacterial type VI secretion system, R-type pyocins and contractile tails of complex bacteriophages. These syringe-like nanomachines use a rigid tube-contractile sheath mechanism for piercing the bacterial membrane. These complexes contain in excess of 1 million of non-hydrogen atoms and are formed by hundreds of protein subunits of about 10 different types. My immediate goal is to give a quantitative description to how these machines work - how they store energy, how much of it can be released and what is the kinetics of this process. My long term goal is to use this knowledge to describe other systems participating in protein and DNA translocation across the bacterial cell envelope.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- Section de Physique