Professor Jennifer Potts, Department of Biology, University of York
Tuesday 20th March, 1.00 p.m., Stacey Lecture Theatre 1
Cell wall-attached proteins of Gram positive bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus can play important roles in infection including the formation of biofilms on medical devices, an important clinical problem. Several of these proteins have a common organization that includes a globular N-terminal domain, a repetitive central region and a cell-wall attachment site near the C-terminus. We are using a variety of biophysical and structural techniques including NMR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography and small angle X-ray scattering to study both the N-terminal domain and the repetitive region to understand the relationship between structure and function. The work has demonstrated, for example, that the S. aureus surface protein SasG can form a highly-elongated structure from a single protein chain.