Research projects of current students

Xiaowei Mei: Start date: Sep. 2008; Nationality: Chinese; Master thesis:
“Function analysis of IE1 of Spodoptera exigua nucleopolyhedrovirus (SeNPV) in mammalian cells”. (2007) Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China; Research group:
AG Higgs, Dept. of Ecophysiology, MPI; Research project description
My project concerns the response regulator RedF which is the output protein of a histidine-aspartate phosphorelay signal transduction system that regulates progression through the multicellular developmental program in Myxococcus xanthus. Typically response regulators contain an output domain which mediates a cellular response, but RedF lacks such a domain and we hypothesize that RedF functions by interacting with unidentified developmental regulator proteins. I have identified interaction partners for RedF using a yeast two hybrid screen against an M. xanthus genomic library. I am using in vivo genetic and protein interactions approaches, as well as in vitro biochemical analyses to characterize the RedF interaction partners to determine how they function with RedF to regulate the developmental program in M. xanthus.