Can Altered Bioenergetics Drive Antibiotic Persistence in Low-Oxygen Conditions?

Abstract

The goal of this project is to engineer the first set of anaerobically visible fluorescent ATP indicators and apply them to examine how intracellular bioenergetics differs between aerobic and anaerobic states for bacterial cells treated with antibiotics. While several ATP sensors are currently available, these require oxygen to produce fluorescence. To address this issue, we propose to develop our sensors based on fluorescent proteins that do not require oxygen. In this project period, we established the key conceptual and methodological framework for constructing these sensors. Significant findings include: (1) identification of 14 viable positions in the reporter backbone where binding domains may be inserted to modulate fluorescence properties based on the principle of allostery (2) establishing a linker mutagenesis and screening pipeline for high-throughput testing of candidate sensor constructs for ATP-induced changes in fluorescence (3) validation of methods for titrating intracellular ATP without causing changes in overall reporter fluorescence (4) identification of terminal amino acids that may be truncated to shorten overall size of the reporter construct by 12 amino acids (potentially making this the smallest reporter gene currently available).

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2021
Accession Number
AD1139942

Entities

People

  • Arnab Mukherjee

Organizations

  • University of California

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Amino Acids
  • Anaerobic Bacteria
  • Anti-Bacterial Agents
  • Arsenates
  • Bacteria
  • Biomedical Research
  • Biosensors
  • Biotechnology
  • Clones
  • Cyanides
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Microbiology
  • Microorganisms
  • Potassium Cyanide
  • Students
  • Synthetic Biology

Fields of Study

  • Biology

Readers

  • Molecular Genetics
  • Molecular and Cellular Biology