Bacterial dormancy is a valuable strategy to survive harmful situations, including antibiotic treatments. We study different models of bacterial dormancy. The type I toxin-antitoxin system tisB/istR-1 is studied as a model system for toxin-induced dormancy in Escherichia coli. TisB is a small membrane toxin that causes depolarization of the inner membrane. We are interested in TisB functionality and how TisB shapes the physiology of bacterial persister cells. The probiotic strain E. coli Nissle 1917 is studied as a model for dormancy after long-term storage in nutrient-deprived environments. We are also interested in the factors that support the recovery process.

Small RNAs (sRNAs) are versatile regulators in prokaryotes. In most cases, sRNAs consist of distinct modules, such as seed regions, binding sites for RNA-binding proteins, and Rho-independent terminator hairpins. Synthetic biology approaches are used to recombine these modules and construct (semi-) synthetic sRNAs for gene regulation in bacteria. We explore the potential of these synthetic sRNAs to control complex phenotypic traits and to study RNA biology.

We are currently extending our repository of sRNA-related bioinformatics tools:

https://github.com/DIGGER-Bac