L’équipe BaT (Structural biochemistry of Bacterial Transporters) de l’I2BC rejoint le GIS FrenchBIC

Equipe BaT, responsable: Solange MORERA 

Our work allows supplying fundamental basis describing molecular function at atomic level. Our team possesses a strong expertise in structural analysis by crystallography of (i) bacterial, plant, phage and human enzymatic mechanisms, (ii) bacterial transport systems for opines, metals, peptides (iii) bacterial and human proteins interacting with DNA such as DNA repair/modification enzymes, transcriptional factors. For short, we are specialized in the study of protein-protein interactions, protein-DNA and protein-ligand interactions, which are at the center of all the biological processes.

Our general goal is to characterize the molecular role of transporters in bacteria using biochemical, structural and biophysics techniques. During 12 years, the team delved into the study of opine transporters from the plant pathogen Agrobacterium focusing on the soluble part denoted Solute Binding Proteins (SBP) of the ABC transporters, as these SBPs played a crucial role in transport specificity. Opine transporters are involved in host-pathogen relationship, nutrient transport and virulence.

The team is exploring complex machineries, such as metal transporters, involving several soluble and membrane proteins. We are studying the two bacterial iron transport systems denoted Fpv from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Ftr from pathogenic Bordetella, Brucella and Burkholderia bacteria. The aim is to understand how these two transporters work.