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Projekt Druckansicht

Infektionsmechanismen archaealer Viren

Antragstellerin Dr. Tessa Quax
Fachliche Zuordnung Stoffwechselphysiologie, Biochemie und Genetik der Mikroorganismen
Förderung Förderung von 2019 bis 2023
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 411069969
 
Erstellungsjahr 2024

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

All organisms on this planet can suffer from viral infections. Viruses infecting archaea, microorganisms that belong to a separate domain of life, display many different unique shapes. As the cell envelope of archaea is fundamentally different from that of bacteria and eukaryotes, viruses infecting them also use special mechanisms to infect the cell. In this project my team and I have focused on understanding how archaeal viruses recognize and bind host cells and infect them. We have developed microscopy and genetic tools to establish model virus-host systems to study infection mechanisms in detail. With this system, we could show that tailed an archaeal virus, that structurally resembles bacteriophages, uses a very different approach than most bacteriophages to recognize and bind the cells. It first binds with the head, flips around and then delivers the genome via the tail. This work indicates that archaeal viruses do employ unique mechanisms for entry, but on the other hand, also reveals common principles that are shared between the domains of life.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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