Advanced techniques in molecular biology and transcriptomics applied to actinomycetes

• Autor(a) principal: Gouveia, Ana Rita Pereira
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/29254
• topic: sRNAs; Streptomyces; secondary metabolites; PhoR-PhoP

Nowadays, the resistance to antibiotics is turning to be one of the biggest concerns of this century. It is risking our public health and might be, in the future, one of the deadliest health issues. Therefore, a solution is needed. Streptomyces is known as a genus that is responsible for many antibiotics. However, in the latest years, the number of antibiotics that reached the clinical use diminished, due to various reasons. The secondary metabolism is composed by a number of processes that, even though aren’t of extreme importance to the cell survival, can give it several advantages. Most of those advantages come as secondary metabolites, and some are known as antibiotics. On the other hand, phosphorus is one of the most important elements to any organism, and, therefore, a mechanism is needed to make sure that this element is regulated. One of the systems that does that depends on PhoR-PhoP. With the discovery of a new type of RNAs, the sRNAs (which have between 50 and 400 nucleotides) the investigation of new compounds with pharmaceutical and industrial importance may continue to go forward, since some of those molecules may function as regulators of the secondary metabolism and, therefore, be related to antibiotics. The aim of this work is to identify sRNAs that are implicated in the phosphate regulation, which is the main assimilation form of phosphorus. My objective in this study was to experience what was like to work in a laboratory, by learning some molecular biology and transcriptomic techniques, such as DNA introduction into cells and nucleic acid extraction, needed for this study.