Bacteria have to respond and adapt very rapidly to environmental stress or changes in growth conditions. One of the strategies they have developed to do so is to regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level, using RNA and proteins as regulators. Our research interests are (1) to gain insights into the mechanisms by which gene expression in E. coli is modulated, directly or indirectly, by molecules as diverse as small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) and proteins involved in RNA metabolism such as ribonucleases, poly(A)polymerase, Hfq and possibly others, and (2) to dissect the links between different regulatory networks involving sRNAs and other transcriptional or translational regulators.
Lejars, M. and Hajnsdorf, E. (2020) "The world of asRNAs in Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria" BBA-Gene Regulatory Mechanisms 1863:194489. doi: 10.1016/j.bbagrm.2020.194489.
Peltier, J., Hamiot, A., Garneau, J. R., Boudry, P., Maikova, A., Hajnsdorf, E., Fortier, L. C., Dupuy, B. and Soutourina, O. (2020) "Type I toxin-antitoxin systems contribute to mobile genetic elements maintenance in Clostridioides difficile" Communications Biology 3:718 doi:10.1038/s42003-020-01448-5