Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
Spring 2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Department
Department of Biology
Advisor(s)
Nathan T. Wright
Abstract
Travelers’ Diarrhea is the number one cause of childhood death in the world. Enteroaggregative Escherichia coli (EAEC) is one of the main causes of this disease. EAEC adhere to the surface of the intestine and stack in a brick-like pattern. Via an unstudied quorum-sensing mechanism, these bacteria express a variety of virulence factors that lead to diarrhea. The long-term goal of this research is to elucidate the mechanism by which EAEC changes from benign to virulent. A previously-unstudied open-reading frame in EAEC, AggR activated repressor (Aar), has recently been hypothesized to act as one of the major transcription factors influencing virulence. Here, we describe two viable methods for purification and a method for cleavage. Circular dichroism (CD) data suggests a partially α-helical structure. Further tests, including multi-dimensional NMR and X-ray crystallography, are currently being conducted to determine the tertiary structure of the protein.
Recommended Citation
Heindel, Andrew, "Structural elucidation of AggR-activated regulator, aar, in enteroaggregative Escherichia coli" (2015). Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019. 54.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors201019/54
