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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

genetic investigation, protein PhoU, intracellular phosphate homeostasis

College

Life Sciences

Department

Microbiology and Molecular Biology

Abstract

Phosphate is a necessary chemical compound for life at any level. Organisms have developed different means of obtaining phosphate from their environments and maintaining an intracellular phosphate homeostasis. The creation and maintenance of such a homeostasis at the very least requires mechanisms for sensing phosphate levels within and without the cell and phosphate transporters which can be regulated accordingly. The protein PhoU is involved in this phosphate response regulation. While PhoU is found in Escherichia coli, a very broad range of bacteria contain homologues with several closely conserved regions suggesting not only that PhoU-like proteins are important for many microorganisms in controlling intracellular phosphate levels but also that they likely share a similar mechanism of action at the molecular level. PhoU has been studied since the mid 70’s and is known to play a vital role in the phosphate sensing/signaling interactions of the cell and, while perhaps there is a basic understanding of at least part of its’ role in these interactions, the big question remains how? In our efforts described here, we attempted to identify mutant PhoU proteins in hopes of shedding light on its’ molecular mechanism of action.

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