Structural basis of plasmide addiction and programed cell death in bacteria

Bacterial toxin-antitoxin (TA) modules are gene pairs involved in bacterial stress response. While initially discovered as stabilizing elemntys on low copy number plasmids, their main abundance is on bacterial chromosomes. This project concerns the structural and biophysical investigation of a series of toxin-antitoxin modules, in particular maz (E. coli chromosome, toxin MazF, antitoxin MazE), ccd (F-plasmid, toxin CcdB, antitoxin CcdA) and phd/doc (bacteriophage P1, toxin Doc, antitoxin Phd). The focus will mainly be on te intrinsic instability and folding of tha antitoxin components and to the structural characteization of toxin-antitoxin and abtitoxin-DNA interactions.