Franziska Graf
Technical University of Munich
Core Facility Microbiome
PD Dr. Klaus Neuhaus
Title of the PhD Thesis
Identification and characterization of overlapping genes in the human pathogens Escherichia coli O157:H7 EDL933 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
Description
Overlapping genes (OLGs) are genes whose coding sequences are completely or partially located on the same DNA locus. In bacterial genomes, short overlaps of only few base pairs are very common. In contrast, only a small number of long or embedded OLGs are known to date. However, it is assumed that long overlaps may occur more frequently in bacteria than previously thought. The goal of this project is to support this hypothesis by identifying and characterizing novel OLGs in the human pathogens Escherichia coli O157:H7 EDL933 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1. This involves, in addition to classical methods of gene-expression analysis such as, e.g., Western blots and qPCR, the use of next-generation sequencing based analyses to elucidate transcriptional and translational profiles (RNA sequencing, ribosome profiling).