Beth's Proposal

Toxin-Antitoxin Pairs in Escherichia coli

BACKGROUND
Toxin-antitoxin (TA) pairs are gene pairs that encode a stable toxin protein and a labile antitoxin protein. In a healthy cell, the toxin protein and the antitoxin protein bind together to form a complex that is harmless to the cell. If, however, the cell loses the gene pair, production of the two proteins ceases, the unstable antitoxin is rapidly degraded, and the toxin accumulates, eventually poisoning and killing the cell. There are at least ten of these TA pairs on the E. coli genome, and we want to figure out why they're there. We believe that these TA pairs exist as part of a quality control mechanism that protects the larger, healthy population by causing a damaged cell to enter a programmed cell death pathway. We know that in competition, a population of E. coli cells lacking just one TA pair is less fit than a wild type population containing all ten of the TA pairs. Thus the focus of my research is to determine a hierarchy of fitness for seven of these TA pairs, that is, the order of importance of seven of these TA pairs. I will be utilizing basic microgiological and newer molecular biological technqiues to accomplish this.

IML THESIS PROJECT
My IML thesis will be a Flash-based, interactive multimedia version of a written scientific paper. This project is intended for a scientific community, but should be relatively accessible to a larger audience. The final project will consist of the basic components of a scientific paper - Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion, References (though perhaps not presented as such) - as well as several multimedia components (illustrations, animations, videos, etc.) that will explicate difficult subject matter and illustrate important aspects of the research endeavor.