In at the deep end

Ideally I would begin this blog with an overview of all our research, explaining our big goals and the various approaches we're taking to them. But a thorough overview would be enough work that I'm likely to put off doing it. So instead I'm just going to jump right into posting about current research projects, and fill in the background as I go.

The CRP-S manuscript:

This manuscript describes a PhD student's work on the specialized CRP-binding sites that control transcription of competence genes in H. influenzae. We keep thinking that it's at the 'nearly finished' stage, but we keep finding ways to substantially improve it. It's now a fine manuscript showing the following:

First, that the genes that are regulated by CRP-S sites in H. influenzae are present in a much wider group of bacteria (the gamma-proteobacteria). This is important because most of these bacteria have not been shown to be competent.

Second, in a subgroup consisting of three major families these genes are all also regulated by CRP-S sites. This is important because nobody know about CRP-S site regulation until we discovered it, even though regulation by CRP has been very intensively studied in E. coli.

Today creating this blog has sidetracked me from using BookEnds to add all the references into this manuscript, while the grad student author works on polishing the figures and finding a few stray bits of information.