While our work was ongoing, another group independently made the same discovery: academic.oup.com/nar/article/.... DdaA also regulates expression of phage defense genes, and Song et al. focused on this aspect of DdaA function while our group focused on its function upon DNA uptake by type IV pili
This work is also a great reflection of a fun collaboration with @katehummels.bsky.social whose help with protein purification was critical for in vitro DNA binding assays!
Excitingly, we found that DNA uptake during natural transformation stimulates the DNA repair pathway through this transcriptional activator (DdaA) - since DNA enters the cell as ssDNA, DdaA can sense this ssDNA to activate expression of crucial DNA repair pathway genes including recA
I am pleased to share my lab’s latest publication - Acinetobacter species lack canonical DNA repair pathway activation mechanisms, and we discovered a conserved transcriptional activator that fills this role: academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
Excited to share the newest preprint from the lab for my first post! Driven by @tayellisonwrites.bsky.social and @ianyyen.bsky.social with Lynne Howell we show the protein FimX has diverged in function away from regulating pilus extension to instead regulate pilus localization in A. baylyi
New paper alert! Outstanding work by PhD candidate Nathan Roberge, great collab with the Ellison and Maxwell labs. #Pseudomonas #phage DMS3 encodes Aqs1, an inhibitor of #T4P assembly ATPase PilB, but how it binds and leads to loss of function was unknown. @mcmasteriidr.bsky.social
New paper alert! We used our fav technique, genetic suppression, to understand how FimX controls function of the T4P PilB motor ATPase in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Great collab with the Ellison lab at U Georgia who helped with some fancy microscopy to capture pilus dynamics! doi.org/10.1371/jour...
🧵 Proud to present a tour de force by postdoc @gregbwhitfield.bsky.social solving the mystery of how bacterial Tad pili can extend and retract with a single motor ATPase. Great collaboration with Lynne Howell, @dr-lori-burrows.bsky.social, @ianyyen.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧵 After years out of the field, I and my lab are again working on bacterial type IV pili. We have just posted our first preprints, and I'm excited to share what we have discovered.
This shows Neisseria gonorrheae bacteria infecting a human epithelical cell. Here, you can see the pili in red.
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Courtney Ellison
Abstract. The ability to sense DNA damage and activate DNA damage response pathways is critical for repairing DNA damage in all domains of life. The most w
We are recruiting postdocs to work on antimicrobial resistance and bacterial cell envelope biology. PLEASE SHARE.
Courtney Ellison
Courtney Ellison
Author summary Type IV pili enable Pseudomonas aeruginosa to attach to surfaces, move (twitch), and form biofilms. Pilus extension is powered by the motor protein PilB, which is regulated by other fac...
