Student Scholars & Faculty Mentors
Projects funded by our internal grants program. Search the table to find students or faculty mentors that share in your interests, and could help you achieve your goals in research, creative activity, or service.
Monitoring Transcription Factor IClR
Name: Erkalo,
Advisor: Melissa Mullen Davis
Department: CHEM
Award: Student Research Grant
Abstract: Infectious bacteria have developed a resistance to antibiotics. This means that many bacterial infections are causing millions of deaths on a yearly basis around the world. Bacteria have a unique feature(called The Glyoxylate Pathway) that can potentially be a target in order to destroy bacteria without hurting the infected human since humans do not have that feature. This bacterial feature is regulated by the transcription factor IclR regulator, binding to these two other substances effect the function of the regulator and how it regulates the bacterial feature. The one substance(Glyoxylate) increases the infectious ability of the bacteria while the other(Pyruvate) decreases infectious ability. We will study the structure of the bacterial feature regulator and the interaction with the two effector substances and measure the affinity the effector substances have to the bacterial feature regulator.