Nominator's project description
| Bacteria can act on their environment through a variety of mechanisms. In particular pathogenic bacteria harbor nanomachines that can inject toxic bacterial proteins into host cells. Salmonellae accommodate several different machines of this kind, amongst others two so called type III secretion systems. How these systems secrete proteins through the bacterial cell envelope, and especially, how substrate proteins transverse the bacterial inner membrane is a hitherto poorly defined process that involves a specialized export apparatus in type III secretion systems. Dr. Wagner worked out the coordination of the assembly of the export apparatus and played an important role in uncovering a substrate sorting platform of type III secretion systems. Now, Dr. Wagner aims to elucidate the architecture of the export apparatus and to unravel the molecular mechanisms of substrate secretion. Since Salmonellae and other bacteria are unable to infect without the action of these nanomachines, Dr. Wagner's work bears great potential for developing novel antibiotics that inhibit these apparatus. |
