Thesis Defense Announcement
To:  The George Mason University Community

Candidate: Tayyaba Feroze

Program: M.S. in Biology
 
Date:   Monday, April 17, 2017
Time:   3:00 pm
Place:  IABR, room 1003
             George Mason University
 Science & Technology Campus
 
 
Title: “Cold Shock Proteins in Francisella novicida”
Thesis Director: Dr. Monique van Hoek
Thesis Committee: Dr. Serguei Popov, Dr. Geraldine Grant
 
All are invited to attend the defense.
 
Abstract: 
Francisella tularensis is a facultative intracellular pathogen causing the zoonotic disease tularemia. The mechanisms employed by Francisella to adapt to cold temperatures, harsh intracellular environments, and being able to survive within host macrophages are not clearly understood. Cold shock proteins (CSPs) are involved in growth at low temperatures as well as other stressful conditions and Francisella novicida encodes two CSPs: cspA and cspC. In this study we showed that at 10°C there was discernible growth defect between wildtype and ∆cspA and ∆cspC. We studied the expression of cspA and cspC genes in Francisella under cold temperature, hydrogen peroxide, and low pH as determined via quantitative reverse transcription PCR. Our results suggest that overall cspA plays a general role in stress response. During osmotic stress, ∆cspC was more sensitive compared to ∆cspA and the parental strain and significantly made more biofilm. These findings suggest that Francisella’s ∆cspA and ∆cspC genes make essential contributions to allowing the bacteria to adapt to cold temperatures and other harsh conditions encountered within the host. In addition, there are some differential roles being played by cspA and cspC that need further investigation. Information from this this study is critical to our understanding of how this pathogen responds to and survives in diverse environments. 


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