Many Enterobacteria such as
Escherichia coli can very flexibly adapt to changes in environmental conditions. This adaptation is controlled by a network of pleiotropic regulators which regulate the expression of many gene products. One of these regulators is the histone-like nucleoid structuring protein H-NS. H-NS is an abundat prokaryotic transcription factor that affects expression of approximately 5 per cent of all genes in E. coli. Regulation mechanisms of these pleiotropic regulators are poorly understood. H-NS, for example, represses some genes very efficiently, although its binding specificity is rather low. Prominent paradigms for such specifically expressed genes are the
Salmonella typhimurium proU operon and the
Escherichia coli bgl operon.
In this project, we addressed the question of specific pleiotropic control by modeling the repression of the
Escherichia coli bgl operon by the protein H-NS. This was done together with Prof. Dr. Karin Schnetz (Institute for Genetics, University of Cologne) and my former colleague Dr. Jutta Gebert.
Radde, Gebert, Faigle, Schrader, Schnetz, 2008. Modeling feedback loops in the H-NS-mediated regulation of the Escherichia coli bgl operon. Journal of Theoretical Biology 250(2), 298-236.