Lecturer

Angela Witte

Scientific Statement

The main interest of the group is the understanding of life under extreme conditions. Therefore, we study the virus φCh1 as a model system for gene regulation of haloalkaliphilic Archaea facing two extremes: high pH and salt.This organism has an optimal growth at 3.5M NaCl and at a pH of 9.5. The virus itself is used as a model system to analyze gene expression in haloalkaliphilic organisms, facing with two extremes: a high pH and high concentrations of salt. The sequence of φCh1, infecting the haloalkaliphilic archaeon Natrialba magadii, contains an open reading frame (int1) in the central part of its genome that belongs to the λ integrase family of site-specific recombinases. The flanking sequences of int1 contain several direct repeats of 30 bp in length (IR-L and IR-R), which are orientated in an inverted direction. The invertible region encodes two structural proteins (gp34 and gp36, encoded by ORF34 and ORF36) expected to represent the viral tail fibre proteins.

Spotlights

Electron micrograph of φCh1 particle negatively stained with uranyl acetate.

Genome map of ChaoS9 compared to φCh1 and φH1. (a) Cumulative AT-skew of all three virus genomes. (b) Genome map of phiCh1; (c) Genome map of ChaoS9; (d) Genome map of phiH1. Scale bar at bottom shows length, in kb. Pink shading between genome maps indicates similarity of encoded proteins (tBLASTx) at ≥ 30% amino acid identity level. Colour coding of genes indicates those encoding proteins with predicted (or experimentally determined) functions. Some of these genes are labeled along the gene maps.

    Selected Publications

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