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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

antimicrobial chemokines, bacterial infections, CCL28

College

Life Sciences

Department

Microbiology and Molecular Biology

Abstract

Antimicrobial chemokines is a type of host defense protein that play an important role in the natural defenses of many organisms such as defending skin and mucosal tissues against bacterial infections.These peptides have a net positive charge, which contributes to membrane permeabilization and/or cell penetration. It has been observed that CCL28, an antimicrobial chemokine, binds to the surface of bacteria, however, it is not known how they bind, or what they do, to cause bacterial death. Research has demonstrated that Yersinia pseudo tuberculosis with mutations in lipopolysaccharide Oantigen and core synthesis genes (rfaD mutation) exhibit increased binding affinity for the antimicrobial chemokine, CCL28. This suggests that the surface proteins and the lipids exposed might be binding targets for this chemokine. My lab has shown that when the defective core oligosaccharide (rfaD mutation) bacteria was treated with proteinase K, an enzyme that degrades surface proteins, there was diminished binding affinity for CCL28 as compared to the untreated cells. My goal in this project is to identify the surface proteins that are potential targets for CCL28.

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